BEAUTY 


BOOKS  BY 
RUPERT   HUGHES 

BEAUTY 

MOMMA,  AND  OTHER  UNIMPORTANT  PEOPLE 

WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

THE  CUP  OF  FURY 

CLIPPED  WINGS 

EMPTY  POCKETS 

THE  FAIRY  DETECTIVE 

IN    A    LITTLE    TOWN 

THE  LAST   ROSE  OF  SUMMER 

LONG    EVER    AGO 

THE  OLD  NEST 

THE  THIRTEENTH   COMMANDMENT 

THE   UNPARDONABLE    SIN 

WE  CAN'T  HAVE   EVERYTHING 

WHAT  WILL  PEOPLE   SAY? 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS 
[ESTABLISHED  1817] 


[See  p.  47 

SHE    WANTED   TO  COW   HIM    STILL   FURTHER,    SHE    WANTED   TO   TEACH 

HIM  NEW  DELIGHTS  AND  TO  BREAK  HIM  AS  HE  BROKE  BRONCHOS — SO 

THAT   HE   WOULD   ACCEPT   HARNESS    AND   DIRECTION    FROM    HER 


BEAUTY 


BY 
RUPERT  HUGHES 

Author  of 

"WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COUING  TO?" 
"MOMMA"  "THE  CUP  OF  FURY"  ETC. 


With  Illustrations  by 
W.  T.  BENDA 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND   LONDON 


BKAUTT 

Copyright.  1921.  by  Harper  &  Brothers 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

BOOK  I 

PACK 

THE  EPILOGUE i 

BOOK  II 
THE  PROLOGUE 65 

BOOK  III 
Miss  NANCY  FLEET 109 

BOOK  IV 
CLELIA 185 

BOOK  V 
THE  ARTISTS  AND  THE  LAW 279 

BOOK  VI 
THE  AFTERGLOW 353 


2229153 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

SHE  WANTED  TO  Gow  HIM  STILL  FURTHER,  SHE  WANTED 
TO  TEACH  HIM  NEW  DELIGHTS  AND  TO  BREAK  HIM 
AS  HE  BROKE  BRONCHOS — so  THAT  HE  WOULD  AC- 
CEPT HARNESS  AND  DIRECTION  FROM  HER  .  .  .  Frontispiece 

Miss  CLELIA  BLAKENEY  AS  PUCK,  SUDDENLY  COME  TO 

LIFE  FROM  SHAKESPEARE'S  PAGES Facing  p.   42 

MRS.  COYKENDALL "       146 

SURELY  THE  DEAD  GIRL  HAD  COME  TO  LIFE!    SURELY 

SHE  WAS  STRUGGLING  AGAINST  HER  CRYSTAL  COFFIN      "      218 


Book  I 
THE  EPILOGUE 


BEAUTY 


CHAPTER  I 

'"PHE  maid  who  brought  up  the  breakfast  was  already 
1  dressed  for  flight.  Her  cap  and  apron  had  been  packed, 
and  she  looked  like  a  poor  relation,  with  none  of  the  smart- 
ness a  servant  gains  from  the  uniform  of  lace  and  linen. 
She  stood  with  one  knee  uplifted  to  support  the  tray  she 
braced  against  the  door  while  she  knocked  with  her  free 
hand. 

She  knocked  twice ;  got  no  answer ;  turned  the  knob  softly ; 
pushed  in  with  an  apologetic  mien.  And  if  anything  de- 
mands apology,  it  is  the  outrage  of  a  summons  from 
slumber. 

Berthe  was  saved  from  that  crime,  for  the  bed  was  empty. 
The  covers  were  all  awry,  as  if  the  nestling  had  flung  them 
off  impatiently.  Berthe  was  glad  of  this,  for  she  always 
hated  to  waken  her  young  mistress;  Miss  Clelia  slept  so 
beautifully ! — and  so  beautiful !  Waking  her  was  like  tearing 
a  flower  out  of  the  ground  by  the  roots,  a  flower  that  cried 
out  in  protest  as  the  mandrake  used  to.  Indeed,  young 
Miss  Blakeney,  Miss  Clelia  Blakeney,  was  apt  to  put  up  a 
drowsy  fight,  trying  to  stay  drowned  in  the  deeps  of  oblivion, 
as  if  she  were  a  kind  of  daily  suicide  resisting  rescue. 

And  this  was  strange,  too,  for  when  Clelia  was  once  awake 
nobody  could  be  awaker  or  aliver.  And  nobody  could 
fiercelier  hate  to  go  to  bed.  Her  rules  of  sleep  seemed  to 
be  Mark  Twain's  very  own;  the  ones  he  announced  at  his 
seventieth  birthday  dinner  as  the  secret  of  his  longevity: 
"Never  go  to  bed  while  there  is  anybody  to  sit  up  with; 
and  never  get  up  till  you  have  to." 

Berthe  had  no  idea  when  her  mistress  had  got  to  bed  the 


4  BEAUTY 

night  before.  Berthe  had  been  told  not  to  wait  up,  but 
there  had  been  a  deal  of  commotion  about  the  big  house; 
just  enough  noise  of  music,  dance,  laughter,  and  chatter  to 
keep  the  servants  awake  in  their  quarters  once  removed; 
yet  not  enough  noise  to  satisfy  their  curiosity.  There  had 
been  a  very  promising  quarrel  of  some  sort,  and  two  slammed 
doors — just  whose  it  was  not  agreed  in  the  early-morning 
comparison  of  notes. 

Berthe  set  the  tray  on  the  bedside  table  and  went  to 
knock  at  the  bathroom  door  to  warn  ma'm'selle  that  the 
time  was  brief.  The  door  was  open,  the  bathroom  empty. 

Puzzled,  Berthe  surveyed  the  bedroom  again.  The  dinner 
gown  of  the  night  before  was  tossed  across  the  chaise  longue. 
The  traveling  suit  that  Berthe  had  laid  out  precisely  was 
where  she  had  left  it.  Corsets,  combination,  stockings, 
ribbons,  garters  were  here  and  there.  The  bathrobe  was 
across  the  footboard  of  the  bed.  But  the  bedroom  slippers 
were  gone.  And  that  was  drdle,  thought  Berthe. 

The  window  was  wide  open,  and  a  sharpening  gale  was 
harrying  the  frothy  pennants  of  the  curtains.  A  few  snow- 
flakes  went  by  outside,  spotting  the  brown  world  to  a 
fawn's  skin.  The  big  storm  was  already  at  hand. 

It  was  the  storm,  or  the  swift  fame  of  it,  that  was  causing 
the  stampede  in  this  camp.  They  called  it  a  "camp" 
because  it  was  in  the  woods  of  the  Adirondacks.  But  it 
was  more  like  a  palace — the  palace  of  a  viking  king,  a 
stronghold  made  of  huge  logs  and  ax-beveled  timbers 
mitigated  with  rich  hangings  and  heaped  luxuriousness. 
And  clustered  about  it  was  a  brood  of  little  houses,  a  dining 
house,  a  kitchen  house,  a  music  house,  one  for  billiards, 
another  for  bachelors;  one  for  servants,  others  for  other 
people  and  purposes. 

An  Indian  summer  of  unusual  tarrying  and  undreamed-of 
balm  had  coaxed  this  little  throng  of  Mrs.  Roantree's  guests 
to  linger  in  the  well-tamed  wilderness  long  beyond  the 
custom.  Then  suddenly  the  belated  New  York  papers  had 
announced  the  uprising  of  a  blizzard  in  the  northwest.  It 
came  conquering  and  irresistible  with  the  roar  and  velocity 
of  a  barbaric  horde  of  airships  swooping  a  mile  a  minute 


THE   EPILOGUE  5 

and  rolling  beneath  it  across  townships,  counties,  and  states, 
a  vast  billow  of  sleet  and  snow  and  ice. 

The  Roantree  camp  was  far  from  the  big  hotels  and  from 
the  nearest  railroad  station.  The  roads  writhing  about  the 
mountains  were  not  good  for  motor  speed.  There  were  but 
two  through  trains  a  day,  and  the  afternoon  express  reached 
New  York  at  an  unholy  hour. 

When  blizzards  raged,  the  trains  floundered  and  stuck; 
passengers  starved  and  shivered  and  life  became  one  long 
battle  with  the  weather. 

The  Roantree  party  had  delayed  till  the  last  moment, 
hoping  that  the  storm  would  slip  across  the  side  line  into 
Canada,  but  the  weather  reports  put  an  end  to  hope. 

The  last  day  in  camp  had  been  as  blithe  and  innocent  of 
winter  as  the  utter  peace  before  a  simoom.  There  was  a 
very  pathos  of  loveliness  in  the  air.  The  evening  sighed 
and  the  moon  mused  with  the  white  face  of  all  regret,  regret 
that  tenderness  must  end  and  cruel  times  begin. 

The  crowd  took  a  phonograph  out  on  the  piazza  and 
danced  in  the  blue  twilight  or  listened  to  the  heart- 
breaking melodies  of  famous  singers  who  earned  fortunes 
by  skirling  their  graceful  anguishes  about  the  world  on 
rubber  wheels. 

The  little  populace  hated  to  go  back  to  town,  especially 
since  several  promising  intrigues  of  more  or  less  innocence 
had  flourished  in  the  water-mirrored  canoes  or  along  the 
leafy  aisles  of  the  infinite  forest. 

The  members  of  the  Lower  House,  the  large  assembly  of 
servants,  had  overheard  and  overlooked  just  enough  indis- 
cretion to  keep  them  from  perishing  of  boredom.  They 
enhanced  their  own  self-respect  by  expressing  in  advance  a 
great  horror  of  scandals  that  might  develop,  and  yet  suffered 
incessant  disappointment  when  they  failed  to  appear. 

The  servants  were  at  a  frightful  disadvantage  in  this 
eternal  duel  between  upstairs  and  downstairs  over  the 
concealment  of  the  truth.  The  mountains  and  lakes  were  too 
large  a  parish  for  the  servants  to  keep  under  inspection, 
and  there  was  precious  little  comfort  in  imagining  the  worst, 
with  no  documents  to  lean  on.  Suspicion  for  suspicion's 


6  BEAUTY 

sake  gives  little  nourishment.  They  were  restless  to  get 
back  to  town. 

The  guests,  though,  were  of  a  contrary  mood,  since  the 
carrying  on  of  housed  romance  in  town  would  be  much 
less  rapturous  and  far  more  difficult,  for  in  spite  of  the 
venerable  lies  to  the  contrary,  mischief  is  very  near  to 
nature's  heart;  mischief  is  almost  nature's  principal 
business. 

The  storm  settled  the  matter  and  warned  them  all  to  get 
them  gone  to  the  city  again. 

And  now  Berthe  stood  perplexed  in  Miss  Clelia's  room, 
wondering  where  she  could  be.  The  whole  big  house  and 
all  the  little  houses  were  in  a  stir.  Maids  and  men  were 
hurrying  wind-blown  breakfast  trays  along  the  covered 
walk  from  the  kitchen  to  the  main  house.  If  Clelia  had  been 
in  any  of  its  rooms  she  would  have  been  sent  scurrying. 

Berthe  dismissed  with  self -rebuke  one  or  two  suspicions 
that  went  through  her  sophisticated  brain  like  dark  snow- 
flakes,  servants'  stories  of  wicked  persons  who  had  over- 
slept in  the  wrong  rooms  and  made  hideous  dashes  in  the 
light  of  day.  The  thought  was  outrageous  in  Miss  Clelia's 
case,  but,  for  lack  of  anywhere  else  to  look,  she  stepped 
out  on  the  porch  that  ran  about  the  big  house.  It  was  only 
one  story  high,  its  numerous  rooms  all  opening  on  a  vast 
encircling  piazza  and  in  on  a  vast  encircled  living  room. 

There  was  no  hint  of  Clelia  out  of  doors.  The  air  was 
turbulent  with  increasing  wind.  Two  motor  trucks  loaded 
with  trunks  that  had  been  packed  the  night  before  were 
already  roaring  down  the  mountain  road  to  beat  the  storm 
to  the  station.  A  flotilla  of  limousines  and  touring  cars  lay 
at  anchor  outside  the  big  garage,  ready  to  carry  off  all  of 
the  guests  and  servants  except  two  men,  who  were  to  stop 
awhile. 

Clelia  had  expressed  a  wish  to  stop  with  them,  but  her 
aunt  had  grimly  refused  to  stay  and  be  snowed  in;  and  so 
had  all  the  other  women,  whose  ideal  of  winter  weather  was 
the  sort  that  Palm  Beach  furnished,  or  Miami. 

Berthe  hurried  back  into  the  bedroom,  the  wind  hustling 


THE   EPILOGUE  7 

her  in  and  banging  the  door  after  her.  To  keep  busy,  she 
closed  the  windows  and  set  to  stripping  the  bed  of  its  clothes, 
folding  the  blankets,  and  carrying  the  sheets  to  the  big 
hamper  in  the  hall. 

She  fretted  over  the  chilling  of  the  coffee  and  the  eggs  and 
the  muffins.  The  horror  of  a  spoiled  breakfast  wrought 
upon  her  till  she  ran  at  last  along  the  doors,  knocking 
at  every  one  where  there  was  a  woman  guest,  and  asking 
if  Miss  Blakeney  were  there. 

Everybody  answered,  "No!"  according  to  her  early- 
morning  mood.  Berthe  stood  distraught.  She  was  tempted 
to  run  to  the  bachelors'  den  and  ask.  Mr.  Coykendall  and 
Mr.  Frewin  and  Mr.  Larrick  had  been  most  notoriously 
devoted  to  Clelia,  and  her  tantalizing  flickers  of  favor  had 
driven  them  almost  to  a  three-cornered  duel. 

Berthe  was  saved  from  a  desperate  impudence  by  the 
appearance  of  the  men  themselves.  They  had  dressed 
quickly,  and  two  of  them  had  breakfasted  at  a  gulp,  according 
to  male  habit. 

Two  of  them  stared  at  Berthe,  but  did  not  speak.  They 
were  Eastern  gentlemen,  Coykendall  and  Frewin,  and  it  was 
their  idea  of  courtesy  that  a  woman  in  distress  would  ask 
their  aid  if  she  wanted  it,  and  would  prefer  not  to  be  dis- 
turbed until  she  did. 

But  Mr.  Larrick,  who  was  a  Texas  gentleman,  had  another 
idea.  Seeing  Berthe  in  a  state  of  arrested  suspense,  he 
paused  to  say — and  to  say  without  a  trace  of  the  intonation 
adopted  by  the  most  kindly  master  to  the  most  valued  ser- 
vant, but  just  as  man  to  woman: 

"Good  mawn',  Burt.    What's  the  trouble?" 

"Oh,  Mr.  Larrick,  Mees  Clelie  I  cannot  find.  The  brake- 
fast  goes  cold,  and  she  must  dress  in  a  horry." 

"You  can't  find  Miss  Cleely!     Did  you  look — " 

"Avrywhere." 

' '  That's  funny, ' '  said  Larrick,  with  all  solemnity.  ' '  Where 
d'you  reckon  she's  at?" 

"Did  I  know!" 

"Have  you  asked  her  aunt?" 

"Yes,  sair.    But  I  weel  hosk  again." 


8  BEAUTY 

She  knocked  at  Mrs.  Roantree's  door  and,  being  bidden 
in,  entered  to  explain. 

Mrs.  Roantree  always  got  mad  first  and  afterward  relapsed 
to  courtesy.  She  rebuked  Berthe  vigorously  for  asking  such 
a  foolish  question,  then  apostrophized  the  absent  Clelia 
for  being  such  a  nuisance,  then  grew  alarmed  and,  flinging 
on  a  wrap,  charged  into  Clelia's  room  to  see  for  herself. 

Other  guests,  hearing  the  commotion,  hung  out  of  their 
doors,  heads  in  various  stages  of  unreadiness  for  inspection, 
and  asked:  "What's  up?"  "What's  wrong?"  "What's  the 
matter?" 

One  thing  was  sure — there  was  absoutely  no  trace  of 
Clelia.  Everything  of  hers  was  found  except  her  slippers, 
her  nightgown,  and  herself.  And  that  was  drole,  as  Berthe 
kept  repeating  with  less  and  less  of  the  stoic  calm  she  was 
paid  for. 


CHAPTER  II 

MRS.  ROANTREE  had  come  to  respect  spiritualism 
since  it  grew  fashionable.  She  agreed  with  Sir  Oliver 
and  Sir  Arthur  and  Sir  William  in  accepting  the  materializa- 
tion of  the  dead  as  a  frequent  and  easy  matter.  She  had 
had  a  number  of  undeniable  communications  with  the  other 
side  herself. 

But  even  she  was  not  ready  to  believe  in  the  dematerializa- 
tion  of  the  living.  And  now  she  stood  in  the  center  of  her 
disheveled  guests,  declaiming: 

"People  don't  just  vanish!" 

She  protested  as  angrily  as  if  some  one  had  insisted  that 
they  did.  She  kept  retorting  to  persons  who  had  not  dis- 
agreed with  her,  and  quarreling  with  beliefs  that  nobody 
had  expressed;  but  she  contradicted  her  own  statements 
with  fine  impartiality. 

"It's  perfectly  outrageous  of  Clelia  to  do  such  a  thing. 
Why  couldn't  she  have  some  consideration  for  the  rest  of  us? 
I  haven't  finished  my  breakfast  yet,  and  it's  ruined.  If 
there  is  anything  I  loathe,  it  is  lukewarm  coffee  and  cold 
poached  eggs.  The  poor  child  must  be  somewhere.  But 
where  could  she  be?  She  couldn't  have  gone  gadding  about 
with  next  to  nothing  on.  Yet  here  are  all  her  clothes. 
Haven't  you  called  her?  Call  her,  why  don't  you?" 

She  ran  to  the  porch  door  and  startled  the  men  by  her 
disarray  and  her  clamor.  "Oh,  Clelia!  Clelia!  Child, 
where  are  you?  Somebody  run  down  to  the  lake  and  see 
if  she's  fallen  in  and  drowned.  No,  that  wouldn't  do  any 
good,  because  if  she  had,  you  couldn't  see  her,  could  you? 
Or  could  you?  And  she  certainly  wouldn't  be  going  down 
for  a  swim  on  such  a  morning  as  this,  with  snow  in  the  air. 
She  couldn't  have  gone  mountain  climbing,  either,  in  her 
satin  slippers.  You  might  get  the  megaphone  and  call,  or 
take  a  look  over  at  the  mountains,  somebody.  She  might  be 


io  BEAUTY 

hiding  somewhere,  of  course.  But  I  do  hope  her  sense  of 
humor  is  better  than  that.  She  begged  so  hard  to  stay  here. 
She  may  be  hiding  to  keep  me  from  dragging  her  back. 
One  thing  is  certain.  I'll  not  stay,  whether  I  find  her  or  not. 
Listen  to  that  wind!  We'll  hardly  make  the  train  as  it  is. 
O  Lord !  what  pests  people  are !  It  might  be  really  something 
serious,  you  know.  If  anything  happened  to  that  angel — 
Oh  dear,  such  a  world!" 

None  of  the  other  women  would  stay.  They  insisted  that 
they  would  love  to,  if — they  would  not  think  of  going  if — 
but — and — of  course — 

Two  of  the  men,  Coykendall  and  Frewin,  glared  at  each 
other  suspiciously,  and  Larrick  glared  at  both  of  them. 
But  none  of  the  men  uttered  his  suspicions  or  his  theories. 

Larrick  was  the  only  one  who  acted  on  Mrs.  Roantree's 
wild  suggestions  to  run  down  and  glance  at  the  lake  and 
look  over  the  mountains.  Even  the  servants  pretended  not 
to  hear  and  busied  themselves  with  breaking  camp.  The 
men  guests  were  in  too  great  a  hurry  to  get  away  or  too  lazy 
of  body  or  soul  or  too  sensible  to  follow  will-o'-the-wisps. 

Larrick  ran  out  into  the  whirlpool  of  the  wind.  He  could 
almost  have  counted  the  number  of  snowflakes  he  had  seen 
in  his  life  before  this  storm.  He  could  hardly  believe  his 
eyes  now.  Last  night  when  he  looked  from  his  window  his 
gaze  could  reach  to  the  stars.  Now,  out  of  nowhere,  out  of 
nothing,  white  tufts  of  swan's-down  were  magically  evolved. 
He  caught  big  flakes  on  his  hand  and  had  just  time  to  marvel 
at  their  astounding  architecture,  the  tiny  majesty  of  their 
patterned  silver  gossamer,  when,  almost  instantly,  they 
were  gone  back  into  the  nothing  they  came  from. 

Clelia  was  like  that.  She  had  come  into  his  vision  sud- 
denly, overwhelming  him  with  a  miracle  of  grace.  And  now 
she  had  winked  out  like  a  bubble,  like  a  snowflake. 

There  were  multitudes  of  other  snowflakes,  but  where 
was  Clelia?  He  ran,  calling  her  name:  "Miss  Blakeney! 
Miss  Blakeney!"  And  then,  since  terror  gave  him  courage: 
"Miss  Clelia!  Miss  Cleel-ya-a-a ! " 

But  the  wind  swirled  his  very  cry  about  his  head  as  if  it 
were  whipped  cigar  smoke. 


THE   EPILOGUE  n 

He  cast  his  eyes  over  the  slaty  shudder  of  the  broad  lake 
where  little  gales  scampered  in  covies  leaving  innumerable 
footprints  of  invisible  fugitives  from  the  big  wind  on  the  way. 
But  there  was  no  hint  of  Clelia  in  that  anxious  water. 

Larrick  darted  wildly  here  and  there,  up  and  down  the 
nearer  mountain  paths,  but  while  his  eyes  were  ready  to 
surprise  her  like  a  caught  dryad,  he  found  no  trace  of  her. 
He  lunged  deep  into  the  green  wilderness  and  lost  his  way. 

By  the  time  he  reached  the  house  again  the  automobiles 
had  gone.  He  could  see  them  scooting  along  the  distant 
roads  and  dwindling  from  lumbering  wains  to  frightened 
beetles.  In  spite  of  her  threats  Mrs.  Roantree  had  not 
deserted  her  niece.  But  the  two  men  Larrick  was  jealous 
of,  Coykendall  and  Frewin,  had  gone.  And  Larrick  would 
have  been  glad  of  that  if  he  could  have  been  glad  of  anything. 

Only  two  men  stayed — Burnley,  the  painter  of  snowy  land- 
scapes, and  Randel,  the  sculptor,  whose  lungs  had  disgusted 
him  by  their  dereliction.  He  laid  the  blame  on  marble 
dust,  but  his  doctor  advised  him  to  spend  the  winter  in  the 
Adirondacks  and  Mrs.  Roantree  had  given  him  a  cabin  to 
fit  up  as  a  studio. 

Randel  was  Clelia's  cousin,  and  his  kinship  gave  him  a 
franchise  to  anger. 

"The  others  couldn't  wait,"  he  explained  to  Larrick,  "or 
they  wouldn't.  They  felt  sure  she  would  turn  up.  I  tried 
to  get  her  aunt  to  go;  I  said  it  would  be  a  lesson  to  the  brat. 
I  offered  to  act  as  chaperon — as  if  anyone  could  chaperon  that 
unbroken  colt !  Damned  funny  where  the  little  beast's  gone. ' ' 

"Don't!"  Larrick  groaned  as  he  winced.  "She  might 
be — "  He  could  not  say  "dead."  It  seemed  impossible  for 
Clelia  and  that  hideous  word  to  have  anything  in  common. 

Now  her  little  dog  came  whining  out,  a  Pekingese  of 
extraordinary  stateliness  for  her  size.  She  could  con- 
descend upward.  She  was  a  dowager  empress  less  than  a 
foot  tall.  She  had  taken  a  fancy  to  Larrick  because  he  was 
always  willing  to  rub  her  back — and  knew  where  and  when 
and  how.  Larrick  spoke  to  her. 

"Where  is  she?  Go  find  her!  Empress,  go  find  Miss 
Blakeney!" 

2 


i2  BEAUTY 

The  Empress  heard  the  name  with  delight  and  fanned 
the  air  with  the  silken  plume  of  her  tail.  But  she  did  not 
run.  She  was  not  a  bloodhound.  Her  chief  pride  was  that 
she  had  the  irreducible  minimum  of  nose;  her  nose  was 
almost  a  dimple.  She  had  slept  all  night  on  Clelia's  silken 
dinner  gown.  Nothing  was  too  good  for  her,  and,  so  long 
as  she  had  any  part  of  Clelia's  apparel  to  sentinel,  she  was 
content  to  bask  in  that  beloved  atmosphere. 

She  was  not  anxious  yet.  She  was  used  to  being  left  alone 
for  hours  and  days,  and  until  Clelia's  clothes  were  taken 
away  she  would  not  worry. 

Randel  urged  Larrick  to  have  his  breakfast. 

"Cleel  will  turn  up  and  give  us  all  the  laugh,"  he  said. 
"She  has  never  grown  up  out  of  her  kid  tricks,  and  she's 
hidden  somewhere,  thinking  that  her  aunt  would  rather 
lose  an  eye  than  a  train  she  had  planned  to  take.  Cleel 
will  be  sick  when  she  learns  that  the  old  lady  has  stayed 
behind.  And  those  two  famous  tempers  will  do  the  rest." 

Larrick  grinned  and  pictured  the  sudden  emergence  of  the 
ever-riant  face  of  Clelia.  He  had  seen  the  rival  wills  of  the 
aunt  and  the  niece  fencing;  and  it  seemed  probable  that  the 
girl  had  stowed  herself  away  somewhere  in  order  to  escape 
the  return  to  town.  She  had  talked  to  Larrick  once  or 
twice  about  the  great  times  she  could  have  meeting  the 
blizzard  halfway.  He  had  never  seen  a  blizzard  and  she 
wanted  to  show  him  one.  He  was  glad  that  they  would 
face  it  together.  To  be  snowed  in  with  her ! 

Clelia  had  a  boyish  love  of  conflict  with  nature,  with 
storms,  rains,  tides,  surf,  obstreperous  horses,  unruly  dogs, 
and  restive  men.  He  had  loved  to  watch  her  intrepid  and 
defiant  moods. 

Convinced  at  length  that  she  was  playing  a  game  of  hide 
and  seek  and  would  appear  when  she  pleased,  Larrick  went  to 
his  breakfast.  He  had  never  been  able  to  negotiate  it  in 
bed  and  had  declined  it  in  his  room.  It  had  been  left  in 
the  dining  casino  by  a  servant  who  had  gone  to  New  York 
with  the  rest.  Cold  as  it  was,  Larrick  enjoyed  it.  He  was 
thoroughly  happy  because  Coykendall  and  Frewin,  the  most 
dangerous  contestants  for  Miss  Blakeney 's  favor,  had  deserted 


THE   EPILOGUE  13 

with  the  crowd,  leaving  him  alone  at  last  with  the  girl  he 
feared  and  adored. 

He  thought  that  they  could  not  have  loved  her  so  well 
as  they  pretended  or  they  would  never  have  abandoned  the 
field  to  him.  And  yet —  He  paused.  Perhaps  they  felt 
that  she  was  in  no  danger  from  him.  Perhaps  one  or  the 
other  of  them  had  some  claim  on  her  that  gave  him  a  feeling 
of  security,  a  feeling  of  contempt  for  the  Texan  outsider  who 
had  blundered  into  their  lodge. 

That  part  of  society  which  is  called  "Society"  was  like  a 
secret  society  to  Larrick.  He  could  not  make  out  the  ritual 
or  the  rigmarole.  He  had  a  natural  tact,  a  Southern  gra- 
ciousness,  and  a  Southern  pride  that  carried  him  along, 
but  he  suffered  for  lack  of  fluency  in  the  court  language.  He 
found  it  far  more  informal  than  his  Texas  slang,  but  dif- 
ferent utterly.  Fashionable  ladies  said  and  did  so  many 
things  that  unfashionable  ladies  would  never  dare  to  say 
or  do! 

Larrick  was  not  so  happy  when  he  finished  his  breakfast. 
He  was  worried  as  to  Clelia's  probable  treatment  of  him 
when  she  came  from  hiding.  She  might  tire  of  him  alone 
in  a  storm-besieged  house.  He  was  ill  equipped  with  parlor 
tricks  or  stunts  for  dull  evenings. 

But  was  she  hiding?  Suddenly  terror  pinched  his  heart 
anew. 

Surely  if  the  girl  had  only  meant  to  conceal  herself  till 
her  aunt  got  away  she  would  have  stolen  forth  by  now. 
With  a  curious  suddenness,  he  found  himself  remembering 
an  old  poem  his  mother  had  read  to  him  once  from  a  scrap 
book.  "Come  where  the  woodbine  twineth,"  was  the 
refrain  of  it. 

In  that  story  poem  a  young  bride  had  crept  into  a  great 
chest  to  hide  from  her  young  husband.  As  she  hid  herself, 
laughing,  and  drew  the  lid  down  a  spring  lock  snapped  and 
made  the  box  her  coffin.  She  had  smothered  there,  unheard, 
unheeded,  unfound  for  years.  And  then  she  was  only  a 
skeleton  and  a  little  dust  in  ragged  silk. 

Larrick  was  so  wrought  up  by  the  remembrance  of  this 
old  yarn  that  he  began  to  ransack  the  whole  place.  Mrs. 


i4  BEAUTY 

Roantree  was  finishing  her  toilet  in  a  slow  rage  at  being 
kept.  Larrick  searched  every  other  room  in  every  house. 
Many  of  the  closet  doors  were  locked  for  the  winter.  He 
pounded  on  them  and  called  through.  In  spite  of  the  pro- 
tests of  Jeffers,  the  caretaker  guide,  he  broke  open  several 
doors,  jimmied  them  with  pokers. 

He  looked  under  all  the  beds.  He  turned  the  storerooms 
out.  He  went  through  the  neat  rooms  of  the  servants' 
quarters.  He  searched  the  cellars,  the  woodsheds,  all  the 
outbuildings,  even  the  ice  house  and  the  distant  stable 
where  an  old  horse  or  two,  some  cows,  and  a  pair  of  oxen 
drowsed. 

He  lifted  the  cover  from  a  well  and  peered  down,  lowering 
an  electric  flashlight. 

By  this  time  the  air  was  afleece  with  snow.  There  was  a 
cry  in  the  wind,  a  witch  shriek,  and  a  sense  of  grisly  hands 
snatching  and  pummeling,  a  sense  of  things  persecuted  and 
persecuting. 

Larrick  went  to  the  lake  again,  stumbled  along  the  shore 
looking  for  footprints,  shielding  his  eyes  against  the  snow- 
flakes  that  were  flung  blindingly  into  his  face  like  confetti 
in  a  drunken  carnival. 

His  panic  excited  the  other  men.  Burnley  and  the  guide, 
Jeffers,  set  forth  to  hunt.  Randel  ventured  out,  coughing. 
Mrs.  Roantree  appeared  and  began  to  grow  hysterical,  to 
dispatch  everybody  in  all  directions,  to  give  orders,  counter- 
mand them,  and  rage  because  they  were  not  carried  out. 
She  tried  to  telephone  to  the  nearest  camps,  but  something 
was  wrong  with  the  wire.  Perhaps  the  wind  had  overturned 
some  of  the  poles.  She  could  not  get  the  Central. 

Perhaps  Clelia  had  gone  ahead  to  the  station  and  was  on 
her  way  to  New  York  by  now.  But  this  theory  satisfied 
nobody. 

The  maid,  Berthe,  had  refused  to  go  to  town.  She  threw 
off  all  pretentions  to  the  self-control  one  expects  of  servants. 
She  accepted  the  direct  possibilities  as  facts  and  wept 
frantically.  Mrs.  Roantree  called  her  a  noisy  idiot,  but  her 
own  panic  was  evident.  She  hurried  Jeffers  away  to  inquire 
at  some  of  the  other  camps,  on  the  chance  that  Clelia 


THE   EPILOGUE  15 

had  gone  visiting — perhaps  in  her  sleep.  "  La  Sonnambula  " 
had  been  revived  at  the  opera  the  season  before,  and  Mrs. 
Roantree  recalled  the  heroine  errant  in  a  nightgown. 

Again  and  again  Larrick  went  back  to  Clelia's  room  and 
stared  at  her  clothes  where  Berthe  had  laid  them  out  in 
readiness  for  quick  harnessing. 

The  little  Empress  kept  climbing  on  the  chair,  determined 
to  guard  them,  purring  when  Larrick  talked  to  her,  whimper- 
ing when  she  seemed  to  understand  that  her  mistress  was 
gone.  Larrick  felt  that  the  dog's  certainty  of  her  return  was 
a  good  omen.  Whenever  he  spoke  to  her  she  would  wag 
her  tail  and  reassure  him  with  snores  of  optimism.  Yet, 
what  could  the  dog  know? 

Larrick  wanted  to  show  some  of  Clelia's  clothes  to  the 
guide's  hunting  dog,  so  that  he  might  learn  the  scent  and 
trace  her.  But  he  dreaded  to  lift  them. 

Clelia's  clothes  were  like  herself,  dainty,  silken,  extrava- 
gant, gay,  and  lawless,  peculiarly  fascinating,  a  kind  of 
fabricated  laughter,  delight  woven  into  visible  surfaces. 
Some  of  her  clothes  Larrick  felt  that  he  ought  not  to  see. 
Yet  they  were  sanctified  by  her.  They  had  been  next  to  her. 
She  had  warmed  them  and  danced  in  them.  He  could  not 
give  them  to  a  hound  to  sniff. 

He  went  back  to  the  storm  in  profound  wonderment  at  the 
snow  blindfolding  the  world,  hushing  the  summer. 

Winter,  the  puritan,  was  here  with  his  white  cruelty. 
There  would  be  no  more  wickedness  of  love  among  the 
flowers;  the  birds  would  quench  their  songs  or  take  them 
South.  The  trees  would  strip  themselves  stark,  but 
beautiful  women  would  wrap  their  graces  in  the  shapeless 
pelts  of  wild  beasts. 

Larrick  had  come  hither  from  a  land  where  winter  is  little 
known  and  less  loved.  He  had  an  especial  dread  of  it. 
He  distrusted  it  as  one  distrusts  a  foreigner.  But,  peculiarly, 
now  it  was  abominable  to  him,  since  it  chilled  him  from  with- 
out when  he  was  already  congealed  with  fears  from  within, 
fears  clustering  about  his  heart  in  icicles. 

By  and  by  Jeffers  came  back  from  the  nearer  camps  with 
the  word  that  all  of  them  were  closed  and  there  was  no 


16  BEAUTY 

sign  of  the  girl  about  them.  Then  Mrs.  Roantree  gathered 
the  men  in  council  before  the  fireplace,  now  aroar  with  great 
blocks  that  had  once  been  trees  creeping  skyward  in  green, 
but  now  leaping  scarlet. 

Randel,  who  was  peevish  with  confinement  and  too  weak 
to  join  the  hunt,  evolved  a  cynical  theory  that  Clelia  had 
run  away  and  had  left  her  clothes  as  a  blind.  Mrs.  Roantree 
grunted  at  this,  "Don't  be  a  fool!" 

Randel  held  his  ground:  " People  are  always  leaving  their 
clothes  on  beaches  or  in  bathhouses  so  that  their  relatives  or 
creditors  will  give  them  up  for  dead  and  not  pursue  them. 
They're  usually  embezzlers,  though." 

"Clelia  couldn't  have  embezzled  anything,"  Mrs.  Roan- 
tree snapped. 

Burnley  amended:  "Except  the  hearts  and  the  brains  of 
several  men.  She  loved  to  juggle  with  those." 

"But  she  couldn't  have  eloped  without  a  wardrobe. 
Clelia  loved  clothes  too  well  for  that.  What  could  she 
have  done  for  clothes?" 

Randel,  who  had  read  too  many  mystery  stories,  said: 
"She  may  have  had  another  frock  that  you  haven't  missed. 
She  might  have  bought  a  dress  from  one  of  the  servants  as  a 
disguise.  She  might  have  gone  to  the  station  with  one  of  the 
baggage  trucks.  She  might  have  taken  it  into  her  head  to 
run  one  of  the  trucks  herself.  She  was  always  doing  crazy 
things  like  that.  She  probably  greeted  the  people  at  the 
station  with  a  good  laugh,  and  went  on  down  to  New  York." 

"But  she  wouldn't  have  left  me  marooned  up  here  without 
a  word,"  Mrs.  Roantree  protested.  "Even  Clelia  wasn't 
quite  heartless." 

"She  may  have  tried  to  telephone  from  the  station  and 
been  unable  to  get  the  house.  She'll  send  word  back  by 
your  chauffeur,  Kemp.  You'll  see." 

This  encouragement  sustained  the  group  till  the  return 
of  Kemp,  the  only  one  of  the  chauffeurs  who  was  to  return. 
The  cars  the  others  had  driven  were  to  be  stored  in  the 
garages  near  the  station  or  shipped  down  to  the  city.  Kemp 
had  been  ordered  to  come  back  for  Mrs.  Roantree. 

He  brought  with  him  Miss  Fleet,   Miss  Nancy  Fleet. 


THE   EPILOGUE  17 

This  jolted  Lamck's  heart  a  little.  He  wanted  to  be  loyal 
to  his  anxiety  for  Clelia,  to  think  of  her  alone.  But  Miss 
Fleet  by  her  very  presence  accused  him  of  a  disloyalty  to 
herself.  For  Miss  Fleet  had  been  the  first  New  York  woman 
to  impress  him.  He  had  found  her  so  very  New  Yorky  that 
she  summed  up  the  whole  city  for  him;  she  had  seemed 
exactly  typical  of  it — as  if  any  one  person  or  group  of  per- 
sons could  typify  a  city!  The  Athenians  called  Pallas 
Athene  their  patron  goddess,  and  she  represented  about  as 
minute  a  portion  of  the  town's  femininity  as  Nancy  Fleet 
of  New  York's  infinitely  various  womankind. 

Still  Larrick  would  never  get  over  thinking  of  New 
Yorkesses  in  terms  of  Nancy  Fleet,  for  she  had  dazzled  him, 
startled  him,  shocked  him,  delighted  him  in  just  the  ways 
he  had  expected  New  York  women  to  affect  him. 

When,  later,  Clelia  Blakeney  had  swum  into  his  ken  he  had 
found  her  utterly  unlike  Miss  Fleet,  though  she  was  just  as 
thoroughly  of  New  York  New  Yorkish.  Then  Larrick  had 
done  what  we  always  do  when  we  find  exceptions  upsetting 
our  longing  for  rules — he  had  said  "the  exception  proves  the 
rule,"  and  let  the  disproof  prove  it  to  his  satisfaction. 

Larrick  had  gone  pretty  far  toward  an  infatuation  for 
Miss  Fleet  before  he  was  subjected  to  Clelia's  fascinations. 
Miss  Fleet  had  been  too  good  a  sport  to  protest  against  his 
manifest  worship  for  Clelia,  yet  it  disturbed  him  to  have 
her  on  the  ground  just  now.  For  just  now  his  interest  in 
Clelia  was  invested  with  a  sense  of  awe,  of  holiness — of 
the  solemnity  that  envelops  the  most  frivolous  of  human 
beings  and  even  pet  animals  when  they  are  considered  in  the 
majestic  connotations  of  death. 

Of  course  Clelia  might  be  alive,  after  all,  and  up  to  her 
characteristic  mischief.  Larrick's  soul  was  tantalized  be- 
tween the  dread  that  she  had  played  a  trick  on  them  (in 
which  case  gloom  would  be  ridiculous)  and  the  dread  that 
fate  might  have  played  a  trick  on  Clelia  (in  which  case 
levity  would  be  odious). 

And  now  Nancy  Fleet  had  to  turn  up  and  mock  him  with 
those  quizzing  eyes  of  hers. 


CHAPTER  III 

MISS  FLEET  was  almost  frozen  with  the  travel  through 
the  storm  in  her  light  wraps.  Snowflakes  had  been 
driven  deep  into  her  hair,  and,  as  they  melted,  the  water 
streamed  over  her  face,  bringing  her  coiffure  down  in  shreds 
and  strings.  Her  lips  were  blue  with  chill  and  her  jaws 
so  palsied  that  her  teeth  chattered  like  a  telegraphic  in- 
strument. 

Her  features  were  hopelessly  bewildered  with  the  task  of 
expressing  so  many  emotions;  she  was  furious  with  rage  at 
not  looking  her  best;  she  was  amused  at  her  own  bad  ap- 
pearance, for  she  always  laughed  at  herself  before  anyone 
else  could;  she  was  in  acute  distress  from  the  cold  that  hurt 
her  in  every  member;  she  was  exhilarated  by  the  combat 
with  the  storm. 

While  she  stamped  and  wrung  her  numb  hands  before  the 
fire  the  chauffeur,  Kemp,  explained  the  difficulty  of  the  re- 
turn, with  the  snow  blinding  him,  blanketing  the  windshield, 
obliterating  the  roads,  and  muffling  the  landscape  in  white 
disguises.  On  one  of  the  turns  a  lash  of  wind  had  almost 
carried  the  machine  overboard  down  a  cliff. 

Kemp  crushed  Mrs.  Roantree's  hopes  with  the  report 
that  there  had  been  no  sign  of  Miss  Clelia  on  the  way 
or  at  the  station,  and  his  final  word  was  that  there  was 
no  chance  of  reaching  the  station  again  until  the  storm 
had  passed  over. 

That  would  mean  several  days  of  imprisonment,  and  the 
sentence  threw  Mrs.  Roantree  into  a  dungeon  of  despondency. 

And  now  Miss  Fleet  was  warm  enough  to  be  articulate : 

"All  the  way  to  the  train  I  kept  thinking  how  rotten  it 
was  of  me  to  run  off  and  leave  you  alone.  So  I  came  back. 
I  hope  you  don't  mind." 

"Thank  God  for  you!"  said  Mrs.  Roantree.     "The  time 


THE   EPILOGUE  19 

is  past  when  I  could  endure  being  alone  with  so  many  men 
or  be  endured  by  them." 

As  soon  as  Miss  Fleet  was  able  to  leave  the  fire  she  man- 
aged rather  expertly  and  as  if  accidentally  to  edge  Larrick 
into  a  corner.  First  she  sent  a  ransacking  gaze  into  him 
and  then  she  began  on  him: 

"The  real  reason  I'm  back  is  that  I  didn't  intend  to  leave 
you  alone  up  here  to  the  mercies  of  little  Clelia.  She  is  un- 
merciful, and  never  so  unmerciful  as  when  she  is  in  one  of 
her  most  innocent  moods.  Did  you  ever  happen  to  realize 
that  innocence  is  the  cruelest  thing  in  the  world?  That's 
because  it  doesn't  know,  I  suppose,  how  things  hurt  and  how 
helpless  we  all  are. 

"When  I  was  a  baby  fresh  from  the  skies  I  was  a  perfect 
beast.  I  pulled  flies'  legs  off  and  scratched  my  mother's 
face  till  it  bled.  I  abused  my  pets  horribly.  I  remember 
once,  when  I  was  yanking  a  pet  pup  around  by  his  front  leg 
in  spite  of  his  yelps,  my  father  yanked  me  into  the  air  by 
my  front  leg — my  arm,  I  mean.  I  let  out  a  yelp  of  pain, 
but  my  horror  was  greater.  It  was  my  very  first  horror.  I 
couldn't  believe  that  my  own  father  would  hurt  me  so.  He 
let  me  down  and  said,  'Now  you  know  how  it  feels  to  be 
hurt.' 

"I've  never  wanted  to  hurt  anybody  since.  Sometimes  I 
think  that  one  reason  there  is  so  much  pain  in  the  world  is 
that  there  has  never  been  anybody  to  yank  God  across  the 
universe  by  the  arm  and  say,  '  Now  you  know  how  it  feels 
to  be  hurt.'  Christ  knew.  He  wept.  And  he  fainted  on 
the  cross  and  asked  God  why  he  had  forsaken  him.  But 
God  let  him  die,  didn't  he?" 

Larrick  made  no  answer.  He  was  not  especially  pious, 
but  he  was  afraid  of  such  talk.  He  believed  in  using  sacred 
names  only  for  prayer  and  profanity.  Miss  Fleet  was  im- 
pudent to  everybody,  including  Heaven,  and  she  enjoyed 
the  shocks  she  gave.  She  believed  in  shocks  for  shock's  sake. 

"But  to  come  down  to  earth,"  she  said.  "You  know  I 
like  you.  Of  course,  I  want  to  beat  your  head  off  about  half 
the  time,  but  that's  out  of  pure  affection  for  you.  So  I  want 
to  warn  you  not  to  get  in  too  deep  with  Clelia.  She's  a 


2o  BEAUTY 

darling.  She'll  be  a  glorious  woman.  But  she'll  break 
lovers  and  husbands  the  way  she  breaks  wild  colts.  You 
don't  want  to  be  only  part  of  a  stable  with  only  one  stall  in 
her  heart,  do  you?  You'll  never  get  her  for  your  own. 
You  couldn't  hold  her  if  you  did. 

"She  likes  you,  but  then  everybody  does.  Besides,  she 
likes  everybody — and  everything.  And  that's  the  heart- 
breakingest,  cruelest  sort  of  person  there  is.  You  won't 
thank  me  for  it,  and  perhaps  I'm  only  a  hypocrite  dressing 
up  plain  jealousy  in  a  pink  domino  of  altruism,  but  I'm  going 
to  stick  around  and  save  you  from  Clelia." 

Larrick  snickered  a  little,  uncomfortably  amused,  and 
said:  " I'm  mighty  much  obliged.  But  I  reckon  we've  got 
to  find  her,  before  you  save  me  from  her." 

"Oh,  we'll  find  her.  I  only  hope  she  doesn't  find  herself 
in  the  headlines  of  the  papers." 

Poor  Clelia  reached  the  big  type,  but  in  a  way  that  none 
of  them  imagined  in  their  most  fantastic  guessings. 


CHAPTER  IV 

IT  was  Miss  Fleet's  way  to  play  the  game  above  the  table. 
She  would  play  with  all  her  might  and  use  all  the  legitimate 
ruses,  but  she  would  not  stack  the  deck  nor  slip  cards  up 
her  sleeves. 

And  now,  having  given  Larrick  fair  warning  of  her  inten- 
tions, she  went  back  to  Mrs.  Roantree  and  the  two  men. 

Mrs.  Roantree  was  so  melancholy  that  she  was  ready  to 
believe  anything  horrible.  She  flatly  announced  her  intui- 
tion that  Clelia  had  killed  herself. 

"Nonsense,  my  dear!"  cried  Miss  Fleet.  "Clelia  might 
kill  herself  dancing,  but  no  other  way.  She  isn't  the  suicide 
sort.  Elope?  Yes!  She  might  run  away  with  almost 
anybody  just  for  the  excitement  of  the  sprint.  But  death  ? 
What  should  she  want  with  that  when  life  is  so  full  of  such 
numbers  of  things?" 

"Who  could  she  have  eloped  with?"  Mrs.  Roantree 
snapped.  She  was  secure  enough  to  leave  whoms  to  gram- 
marians and  social  stragglers. 

Miss  Fleet  evaded  this  question  with  a  shrug,  but  Randel 
had  a  suggestion. 

"There's  Coykendall.     He  was  rushing  her  mighty  hard." 

"But  they  had  a  quarrel  last  night,"  Burnley  objected. 

"That's  as  good  a  prelude  to  an  elopement  as  any,"  said 
Miss  Fleet.  "And  Clelia  was  never  of  the  same  mind  two 
days  running." 

Mrs.  Roantree  answered,  coldly,  "There's  one  little  dif- 
ficulty— Coykendall  still  has  a  wife." 

"  But  she's  getting  a  divorce  from  him.  She  may  have  it 
by  now." 

"Even  if  she  has,  he  can't  remarry." 

"He  can't  remarry  in  New  York,  but  they  could  go  to 
another  state." 


22  BEAUTY 

Mrs.  Roantree  would  never  permit  anybody  else  to  criti- 
cize her  kith.  "Clelia  is  decent,  at  least.  She  is  incapable 
of  such  a  thing.  Besides,  Coykendall  didn't  go  away  with 
her.  He  went  with  the  crowd." 

Randel  had  all  the  stubbornness  of  a  sickly  mind.  "Well, 
she  might  have  skipped  out  ahead.  He  could  drop  off  at 
some  station.  But  I  don't  insist  on  Coykendall.  There 
may  be  somebody  you  never  knew  she  knew.  How  about 
the  young  professional  dancer  over  at  the  hotel?  She 
rushed  him  pretty  hard." 

Mrs.  Roantree  sniffed,  "You're  delirious!" 

Miss  Fleet  came  to  her  support.  "Clelia  only  danced 
with  that  cub  because  he  danced  better  than  anybody  else 
up  here.  She  loved  him  as  she  loved  a  good  racing  car — 
because  he  furnished  her  with — with  transportation." 

Mrs.  Roantree  added  another  argument:  "And  of  course 
Clelia  would  never  marry  out  of  her  class." 

"Class!"  Randel  laughed  harshly.  "Girls  never  do,  of 
course." 

Larrick  felt  uneasy  at  this  discussion  of  class.  He  was  not 
quite  sure  what  class  meant  but  he  was  sure  that  he  was  not 
in  theirs,  whatever  it  was. 

Burnley  wasted  a  bit  of  sarcasm  on  the  petulant  Randel. 

"She  might  have  run  off  with  one  of  the  grooms  or  chauf- 
feurs or  one  of  the  boatmen,  perhaps." 

Randel  turned  quite  nasty:  "It  has  happened,  hasn't  it? 
Rich  girls  of  what  are  known  as  '  the  best  families '  have  been 
running  away  with  their  inferiors  since  the  world  began. 
You  know  one  or  two  shining  lights  who  have  eloped  with 
their  fathers'  chauffeurs,  just  as  the  men  of  the  best  families 
marry  their  housekeepers  or  their  stenographers  or  chorus 
girls.  When  I  was  a  boy,  marriages  with  coachmen  were 
very  popular.  In  the  old  Roman  days  it  was  charioteers 
and  gladiators  who  got  the  swell  girls.  Before  long,  I  sup- 
pose, it  will  be  liveried  aviators  running  the  family  aero- 
limousines.  You'll  find  that  what  has  happened  keeps  on 
happening." 

There  was  just  enough  hatefulness  about  the  suggestion 
to  make  it  abominably  plausible.  Larrick  was  revolted  by 


THE    EPILOGUE  23 

the  merciless  imagination  of  Randel.  But  he  dared  not 
protest,  since  the  only  protest  he  could  think  of  would  have 
to  be  expressed  by  his  fist.  His  fist  was  his  substitute  for 
sarcasm,  irony,  innuendo,  and  other  forms  of  light  repartee. 
It  tingled  now  to  stamp  the  slander  back  into  Randel's 
teeth,  but  Randel's  weakness  saved  him.  One  cannot  slug 
an  invalid. 

Burnley  cleared  the  air  by  wholesome  comment: 

"You  know  Clelia  better  than  to  talk  such  rot.  Clelia's 
not  that  sort  at  all." 

"Oh,  you  know  all  that  goes  on  in  a  girl's  soul,  I  suppose," 
Randel  sneered.  "You  know  all  the  things  she's  capable  of, 
all  her  secret  thoughts  and  letters  and  the  crazy  things  she 
calls  romance.  Eh  ? ' ' 

"I'm  not  God,  but  I  know  Clelia  better  than  you  do. 
You've  got  the  girl  all  wrong.  Whatever  else  she  was,  she 
was  no  sneak.  If  she  had  wanted  to  marry  a  chauffeur  she'd 
have  said  so  and  she'd  have  torn  the  world  apart  to  get  him. 
She  wasn't  afraid  of  anything  or  anybody.  She  said  what 
she  thought  as  fast  as  she  thought  it,  and  she  did  what  she 
wanted  to  when  she  wanted  to." 

Even  Randel  nodded  to  this.  He  acknowledged  his  defeat 
with  a  grumble  and  kept  silent.  Clelia's  fearlessness  was 
indeed  her  first  quality.  She  was  not  afraid  of  bodily  or 
mental  risk.  She  had  a  contempt  for  physical  and  spiritual 
danger.  She  did  not  care  where  she  went  or  with  whom, 
confident  always  that  she  could  take  care  of  herself. 

She  was  not  even  afraid  of  gossip.  She  got  herself  talked 
about  by  the  respecters  of  appearances.  But  what's  the  fun 
of  gossip  if  the  slandered  one  laughs  at  it?  She  did  not 
trouble  to  be  discreet  or  to  avoid  the  look  of  evil.  She  de- 
spised scandal,  and  was  so  high  of  pride  that  somehow  she 
made  nearly  everybody  feel  that  her  pride  guaranteed  her 
good  conduct. 

Larrick  admired  her  as  he  admired  a  beautiful,  unbreak- 
able broncho,  whose  very  intractability  compels  affection. 
He  had  winced  at  much  that  was  said,  but  had  held  his  peace 
until  Mrs.  Roantree  sighed,  tenderly: 

"That's  true.     Clelia  would  never  have  run  away  from 


24  BEAUTY 

anything  or  anybody.     She  wouldn't  have  run  away  with 
anybody." 

Then  Larrick's  patience  broke,  and  he  spoke  up,  startlingly : 
4 '  I  wish  you-all  would  quit  saying  '  she  was '  and  '  she  wasn't, ' 
'she  would'  and  'she  wouldn't.'  Why  can't  you  say  'she  is' 
or  'she  isn't'?  Sounds  to  me  like  you-all  had  already  given 
her  up  for  gone.  I  don't  like  that  past-tense  business." 

"Quite  right,  Mr.  Larrick,"  said  Mrs.  Roantree,  pleased 
for  once  to  be  rebuked.  "  This  is  not  an  inquest.  Clelia  is 
somewhere,  and  no  doubt  she  has  a  perfectly  good  reason  for 
being  there.  It's  simple  madness  to  imagine  her  running 
away  with  Coykendall.  There's  Norry  Frewin,  though. 
Clelia  was  always  rather  fond  of  him  in  spite  of  their  ever- 
lasting quarrels.  But  he  was  afraid  of  his  mother,  and  his 
mother  didn't  approve  of  Clelia.  Mothers  don't  count, 
of  course.  I  never  had  any  influence  over  any  of  my  chil- 
dren. Heaven  knows  they  wouldn't  let  me  have  any  say 
about  their  wives,  though  I  couldn't  have  picked  worse  ones 
than  they  did.  Norry  might  have  persuaded  Clelia  to  marry 
him,  but —  Is  there  any  reason  why  Clelia  shouldn't  have 
married  him  openly  if  she  wanted  to?  His  mother's  objec- 
tions would  only  have  made  him  a  little  more  interesting  to 
Clelia.  There  wasn't  any  other  obstacle,  was  there?" 

Burnley  blurted  out,  "Well,  of  course,  there  was — "  He 
caught  himself. 

Mrs.  Roantree  waited,  then  urged,  "Go  on,  tell  me!" 
"It  wouldn't  be  clubby,  and  I  don't  believe  in  gossip." 
"What's  better  than  gossip?    Tell  me,  before  I  scream!" 
Burnley  shook  his  head  stubbornly  and  would  not  be 
pumped. 

"That's  a  dirty  trick,"  said  Nancy  Fleet.     "Here  we  are 
all  locked  up  in  the  snow  and  I  say  that  any  fellow  who 
knows  any  scandal  ought  to  share  it  with  the  rest  of  us." 
Burnley  kept  wagging  his  head  from  side  to  side. 


CHAPTER  V 

MRS.  ROANTREE  subsided  into  a  sulks  of  baffled 
curiosity.  The  men  smoked  and  pondered.  The 
flames  aspired  from  the  logs  they  consumed.  In  the  gleam- 
ing embers  below  the  logs  was  a  kaleidoscope  of  hot  colors, 
and  Larrick,  who  had  spent  many  a  lonely  hour  with  nothing 
else  to  read  or  heed  but  the  shifting  pictures  in  a  fire,  fell 
into  an  old  habit  of  seeing  landscapes  there  and  watching  the 
transaction  of  remembered  incidents. 

He  fell  to  thinking  of  Norry  Frewin  and  of  his  first  meeting 
with  the  youth.  It  seemed  to  him  that  if  Clelia  had  run 
away  with  anybody  it  would  probably  have  been  with 
Frewin,  for  Frewin  was  handsome,  well  born,  magnetic, 
and  impulsively  uncertain  enough  to  be  interesting  always. 

If  it  had  not  been  for  Norry  Frewin,  Larrick  would  never 
have  met  Clelia.  If  it  had  not  been  for  Larrick,  Frewin 
would  never  have  lived  to  present  him  to  Clelia  or  to  be  dis- 
cussed as  her  possible  abductor.  Larrick  even  now  could 
not  tell  just  how  he  felt  toward  Frewin.  His  gratitude,  re- 
sentment, affection,  envy,  and  contempt  for  the  man  were  alt 
keen  and  contradictory. 

Both  Larrick  and  Frewin  were  the  victims  of  their  own 
impulses,  of  impulses  that  shook  them  with  lightning  and 
seemed  to  come  from  as  far  away  and  to  be  as  irresistible. 
Impulse  had  brought  them  together  on  a  strange  occasion. 

Frewin  had  quarreled  with  his  enormously  wealthy  father, 
and  an  impulse  had  led  him  to  shake  the  golden  dust  of  the 
New  York  home  from  his  feet  and  fling  to  the  opposite  ex- 
treme of  life,  the  very  deserts  of  the  Southwest.  He  had 
been  drawn  there  by  the  heroic  tales  he  had  read  of  cowboy- 
land,  the  myth  realm  of  the  American  youth — what  the 
clouds  and  their  thunderers  were  to  the  Scandinavians  and 
the  scenes  of  demigodly  feats  to  the  Greeks. 


26  BEAUTY 

It  had  not  taken  long  to  convince  Frewin  that  the  desert 
was  not  for  him.  The  pine  shacks  and  tawdry  gambling 
saloons  along  the  muddy  and  dusty  wallows  called  streets, 
and  the  uncouth,  unkempt  cattlefolk  who  amused  them- 
selves dismally  there,  were  not  likely  to  fascinate  a  fastidious 
soul  that  had  found  the  Tenderloin  of  New  York  stupid  and 
its  sophisticate  populace  dull. 

But  his  pride  long  survived  his  money  and  he  had  tried 
to  stick  it  out;  had  tried  to  get  money  by  gambling  and 
finally  even  by  labor.  His  language  and  his  very  intonations, 
however,  branded  him  as  a  foreigner,  and  the  traits  that 
proved  him  well  bred  in  the  East  proved  him  not  bred  at  all 
in  the  West.  In  consequence  he  suffered  cruel  humiliations, 
privations,  degradations  till  his  proud  spirit  was  all  in  a 
dismay  and  he  was  afraid  to  call  his  soul  his  own. 

In  an  hour  of  morbid  dejection  and  of  desperate  hunger  he 
wandered  into  a  decrepit  saloon  that  was  a  disgrace  even 
to  the  starveling  village  where  the  best  was  of  the  worst. 

It  happened  that  Larrick  happened  to  slide  off  his  horse 
outside  that  same  saloon.  Otherwise,  the  other  things  that 
happened  would  never  have  been. 

Larrick  had  known  nothing  of  the  velvet  of  life,  which  was 
all  Frewin  had  known  until  recently.  But  even  to  Larrick 
that  town  and  that  gin  joint  were  disheartening.  He  was 
in  a  grouch  against  life  in  general  and  cattle  punching  in 
particular.  He  was  ready  for  a  fight  with  anybody  or  any- 
thing— cayuse,  steer,  sheriff,  or  God.  When  he  shambled 
inside  the  floppy  door  and  glowered  at  the  dreary  bar  with 
its  woeful  meanness  he  was  about  to  fling  out  again,  but  he 
noticed  the  peculiar  behavior  of  the  young  man  he  afterward 
came  to  know  so  well  as  Frewin. 

The  first  thing  that  caught  his  attention  was  Frewin 's 
embarrassment.  The  young  fellow  was  manifestly  hesitat- 
ing to  approach  the  bar.  Larrick  could  not  guess  that  the 
shabby  and  disconsolate  youth  was  trying  to  muster  the 
courage  to  ask  the  keeper  to  lend  him  a  drink  and  a  clutch 
of  the  odious  free  lunch.  Frewin  had  been  so  used  to  open- 
ing accounts  anywhere  in  New  York  that  a  request  for  credit 
seemed  to  be  a  natural  approach. 


THE   EPILOGUE  27 

His  self-respect  balked  at  the  present  necessity,  however, 
and  he  paused.  Larrick,  for  lack  of  any  other  curiosity 
about  anybody  in  the  world,  watched  him,  wondering  what 
worried  him. 

Hunched  over  the  bar  was  a  boozy  braggart,  that  old- 
fashioned  thing  known  as  a  "bad  man,"  this  poor  town's 
one  best  bad  man,  and  drunk  enough  to  be  really  bad. 
Spot  Caper  was  drunk  enough  to  have  slung  the  obsolete 
accoutrement  of  a  gun  and  holster  at  his  groin,  and  he  was 
telling  the  surfeited  barkeeper  of  a  man  he  was  going  to  get 
and  get  good  and  plenty. 

Frewin  did  not  have  a  gun  and  would  never  have  used  it 
if  he  had.  Larrick  owned  a  gun,  but  carried  it  only  for 
rattlesnakes  and  cattle  thieves  when  he  was  riding  range. 
Frewin  had  not  been  trained  to  the  use  of  a  revolver  as  a 
proof  of  sincerity  or  as  italics  to  remarks.  He  was  utterly 
unready  for  what  followed. 

As  he  approached  the  barkeeper  and  bent  across  the  soppy 
counter  to  beg  a  very  private  ear  his  elbow  struck  the  bad 
man's  glass  of  whisky  and  sent  it  rolling.  It  scattered  all  its 
precious  liquid  fire  and  ended  in  a  crash  at  the  barkeeper's 
feet.  Frewin  was  dumfounded  at  the  leonine  belch  of  rage 
that  Spot  Caper  emitted.  Frewin  mumbled  in  his  drawing- 
room  tone — that  Eastern  tone  which  sounds  so  offensively 
snobbish  to  Western  snobs : 

"Oh,  I'm  so  sorry!"  He  was  about  to  offer  handsomely 
to  buy  another  round  of  drinks  when  his  tongue  was  locked 
by  the  horrible  fact  that  he  had  never  a  dime  to  buy  one 
with. 

Spot  roared:  "Sorry!  You're  sorry,  are  you?  Well, 
what  the  hell  does  sorry  get  me?  You — " 

The  worst  of  it  was  that  Spot  was  also  dimeless  and  had 
already  been  dunned  by  the  barkeeper  for  his  past  account 
and  forced  to  pay  for  the  late  spilled  liquor.  The  barkeeper 
also  was  angry  at  the  breakage  and  waiting  for  Frewin  to 
make  good. 

The  prodigal  took  the  curses  and  the  contumely  of  Spot 
till  his  gorge  rose  and  he  protested,  feebly: 

"I've  apologized,  and  that's  all  I  can  do." 


28  BEAUTY 

Apparently  it  was.  For  he  did  not  move  when,  with  a 
startling  whisk,  Spot  flashed  his  gun  from  its  case  and  jammed 
its  muzzle  into  Frewin's  very  teeth.  He  was  too  scared  to 
move.  He  did  not  budge  or  speak  even  when  Spot  damned 
and  double  damned  him  for  everything  loathsome  and  told 
him  just  what  parts  of  him  he  would  shoot  off  if  he  didn't 
shell  out  and  shell  out  quick. 

It  was  Larrick  that  moved.  Under  some  odd  compulsion 
that  he  never  could  explain  he  took  two  or  three  strides 
forward,  as  long  and  as  quick  as  a  catamount's,  and,  ar- 
riving by  Frewin,  who  was  nothing  at  all  to  him,  shouldered 
Frewin  aside,  and  took  his  place  in  front  of  the  gun  of  Spot 
Caper,  whom  also  he  had  never  seen  before. 

When  the  surprised  and  infuriated  Spot  barked  at  him 
to  get  the  hell  out  of  there  or  take  what  came,  the  amazed 
and  amazing  Larrick  leaned  forward,  rested  his  forehead 
on  the  muzzle  of  Caper's  pistol,  and  commanded: 

"Go  on  and  shoot!" 

"Pull  your  freight  or  by  God  I  will!"  Caper  yelled. 

But  Larrick  answered,  "Agh!"  a  long,  disgusted,  "Agh!" 
like  a  gathering  of  spittle  in  his  throat,  and,  pressing  his  brow 
harder  against  the  black  mouth  of  the  weapon,  invited  the 
death  so  lightly  leashed  that  it  was  almost  as  dangerous  for 
Caper  to  lift  his  finger  from  the  trigger  as  to  press  it. 

Larrick  waited  a  moment  in  that  ridiculous  sublimity 
of  offering  himself  in  the  stead  of  a  stranger  and  then,  as  if 
to  take  away  the  last  suspicion  of  nobility,  he  embellished 
the  vicarious  sacrifice  with  the  dirtiest  language  in  his 
memory. 

One  may  not  print  nowadays  all  the  words  one  hears  all 
about  him,  but  among  the  publishable  remarks  of  Larrick's 
Frewin  remembered  something  to  this  effect: 

"You  cain't  shoot,  and  you  know  it,  you  yalla-livered 
skunk.  You  cain't  even  leave  go  of  the  trigga.  You 
cain't  dew  nothin'  at  tall!  But  I'll  tell  you  what  I'm  goin' 
to  dew.  I'm  goin'  to  kick — " 

During  the  elaborate  menu  of  activities  that  Larrick 
outlined  Spot  Caper  went  quite  to  pieces.  His  trigger  finger 
collapsed.  His  elbow  relaxed.  His  jaw  dropped.  His 


THE   EPILOGUE  29 

head  rolled.  His  tongue  oozed  out.  His  knees  caved.  He 
broke  gradually  everywhere,  and  went  to  the  floor  as  abject 
as  if  he  belonged  in  the  spittoon  he  fell  across. 

He  was  slobbering  and  sobbing  in  shameful  grief  and 
remorse  at  his  inability  to  do  the  impossible  and  murder 
an  unknown  man  who  dared  him  to. 

Then  Larrick,  a  little  overstrained  by  his  own  storm, 
was  frenzied  enough  to  turn  on  the  craven  at  his  feet  and 
kick  him  across  the  room,  rolling  and  sprawling  and  creeping 
on  all-fours,  till  a  final  bull's-eye  in  the  full  target  sent  Caper 
under  the  half  door  and  out  into  the  street,  where  a  passing 
schoolmarm  almost  stepped  on  him. 

Spot  had  dropped  his  useless  pistol  in  transit.  Larrick 
picked  it  up,  slapped  it  on  the  bar,  and  said  to  the  awestruck 
proprietor : 

"Give  that  back  to  old  What's-his-name  when  he  comes 
round  sober  and  tell  him  to  swap  it  for  a  pep 'mint  stick  or 
somethin'  he  can  use." 

Frewin  sidled  meekly  to  the  hero's  side  and  mumbled: 

"You're  the  bravest  man  I  ever  heard  of  or  read  about; 
and  that's  the  bravest  thing  that  was  ever  done." 

"Brave  hell!"  Larrick  yawped,  blushing.  "I'm  a  Gaw- 
dam  fewl  and  you're  anotha." 

But  Frewin  would  not  be  denied  his  tribute.  With  a 
formality  he  could  not  help,  though  it  shamed  him,  he 
faltered : 

"How  can  I  ever  repay  you?" 

"Buy  me  a  drink  and  forgit  it." 

"But  I— I  can't." 

"Broke?" 

Frewin 's  head  dropped. 

"Then  I'll  buy  you  one.  I  been  busted  many's  the  time. 
Hey,  boss,  set  that  bottle  marked  B'urbon  ova  heah,  with 
tew  glasses." 

The  raw  whisky  tasted  like  a  red-hot  poker  all  the  way 
down  Frewin's  gullet,  but  it  anesthetized  his  pride 
to  enable  him  to  accept  further  alms  of  the  same  sort  from 
his  ribald  savior. 

When  their  legs  began  to  corkscrew  they  gyrated  to  a 


30  BEAUTY 

table  and  sat  down  for  further  drinks.  Frewin  grew  talk- 
ative, told  his  real  name,  and  his  station,  and  all  about 
the  old  man  in  New  York  and  his  poor  mother  waitin' 
for'm  't'ome. 

Larrick's  whisky  gave  him  solemnity  and  he  sermonized. 

"Jewa  hear  tell  of  the  Proggal  Son?  'Memmber  the 
par'ble  abote  the  Proggal  Son  in  New  Tes'ment?  Fella 
that  lef  fine  ranch  and  ate  husks  off  en  the  hawgs?  Well, 
you're  just  anotha  dam'  proggal  and  you're  goin'  back  and 
fall  on  your  old  dad's  sneck  same  way." 

"Imposs'le!"  Frewin  wailed.  "Too  late!  Oh,  it  stew 
late!" 

"Tew  late  nothin'!"  Larrick  stormed.  "You  have  place 
like  that  waitin'  for  you;  palace  on  Fi'th  Thavenoo  and 
dress  soots,  sill  kats,  and  places  to  go  and  shows  and  all,  and 
you  leave  it  and  come  down  to  wors'  part  of  Tessas.  And 
here's  me  would  give  my  right  teye  to  get  even's  mush  as 
a  glimp  of  N'  Yawk  and  never  been  nawth  of  Dallas  in  all  my 
bawn  days.  And  you  say,  'Tew  late  to  go  back!'  Tew 
nothin'!  You're  goin'  back  on  firs'  train  to  your  pore  HT 
motha  who's  wai'n'  for  you! " 

Frewin  blubbered  gloriously  at  this,  but  shook  his  addled 
pate  and  burbled :  "Imposs'le!  Oh,  simposs'le!" 

Larrick  smote  the  table  till  the  glasses  leaped,  and  mounted 
to  his  highest  ferocity  as  he  shouted: 

"You're  goin'  home  on  firs'  strain  like  a  gemlenam  or 
I'm  goin'  to  kick  you  all  way  to  N'  Yawk  like  I  kicked  old 
Whassname  into  the  street." 

Frewin  yielded  to  this  frightful  promise  and  consented  to 
start  as  soon  as  he  was  sober  enough.  Larrick  agreed  that 
it  would  be  well  to  wait  for  this  moment  and  they  fell  back 
in  their  chairs  and  slept  for  several  hours. 

Sleep  followed  by  cold  water  and  coffee  and  some  well- 
needed  food  restored  the  two  young  men  to  their  senses 
sufficiently  to  debate  the  problem  of  raising  the  amount  of 
the  fare  to  New  York. 

Larrick  found  a  friend  who  lent  him  the  amount  on  his  own 
recognizance,  and  the  next  day  he  put  Frewin  aboard  the 
train  to  Paradise.  He  had  contributed  enough  besides  the 


THE   EPILOGUE  31 

fare  for  a  shave  and  a  haircut  and  a  bath  at  the  barber  shop, 
some  clean  linen,  and  a  little  pocket  money. 

Before  the  train  pulled  out,  the  New  Yorker  and  the 
Texan  were  Damon  and  Pythias.  But  strange  things  had  to 
occur  before  they  met  again. 

By  the  time  Frewin  had  reached  home  and  the  all-forgiving 
welcome  there,  and  had  sent  back  a  letter  of  gratitude  and 
the  borrowed  money  with  usury,  Larrick  had  vanished  into 
the  wilderness,  taking  a  new  job  and  worrying  little  about  his 
delay  in  repaying  the  man  who  had  staked  him  to  the  fund 
for  the  restoration  of  Frewin  to  respectability.  The  letter 
was  returned  to  Frewin  undelivered  and  it  left  him  with  an 
indissoluble  obligation  on  his  head.  An  obligation  tor- 
mented him  like  the  itch  and  he  suffered  agonies  till  his 
chance  came. 

And  now,  a  year  later,  the  once  penniless  Larrick  was  a 
rich  guest  in  an  Adirondack  camp,  wondering  if  Frewin 
had  stolen  from  him  the  rich  maiden  he  loved,  and  wondering 
if  his  hatred  of  Frewin  were  great  enough  to  exceed  his  love 
for  the  man.  It  is  very  hard  to  hate  those  that  have  taken 
a  great  deal  of  one's  gifts.  Such  persons  are  like  investments. 
It  is  not  easy  to  hate  investments. 

Larrick  said  to  himself,  "If  Frewin  has  carried  off  my 
Clelia  I'll  kill  him!"  But  he  knew  that  he  could  not  harm 
the  man  he  had  already  saved  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life. 

Yet  the  thought  of  anybody  having  Clelia  except  himself 
was  a  frantic  thought  and  he  could  only  wonder  what  he 
would  do  if  he  found  them  together — the  girl  he  revered  and 
desired  and  the  man  he  had  been  more  than  a  brother  or  a 
father  to. 

He  could  only  wonder  what  he  would  do,  for  he  could  never 
tell  in  advance.  All  he  could  be  sure  of  was  that  it  would 
be  something  unreasonable,  instant,  rash,  and  as  insane 
as  his  substitution  of  himself  for  Frewin  at  the  muzzle  of 
Spot  Caper's  gun. 

It  is  a  maddening  thing  to  be  the  victim  of  impulse 
beyond  prophecy,  and  Larrick,  cursing  his  own  helplessness 
with  his  own  soul,  plunged  once  more  into  the  blizzard  to 
get  away  from  the  cyclone  in  his  own  soul. 


CHAPTER  VI 

HPHE  storm  was  in  full  cry  now.  The  air  seemed  to  have 
1  gone  mad,  to  be  venomous  with  implacable  rancor. 
The  trees  and  rocks,  the  high  hills  and  the  cheerful  waters, 
had  not  challenged  or  insulted  the  storm  or  defied  it.  They 
were  as  meek  as  Armenians  in  a  Turkish  massacre,  increasing, 
rather  than  appeasing,  hatred  by  submissiveness. 

Larrick  was  astounded  at  the  personal  maniacal  wrath 
that  sought  to  flay  the  very  flesh  from  the  earth. 

The  snow  had  changed  to  splintered  ice,  a  hurricane  of 
thorns,  blistering  cold,  blinding,  freezing  the  eyeballs. 

When  Larrick  bent  his  back  to  the  gale  the  air  went 
forward  with  such  onrush  that  he  seemed  to  gulp  for  breath 
in  a  vacuum. 

He  who  had  come  forth  to  hunt  somebody  had  soon 
almost  forgotten  who  it  was  he  sought,  for  now  he  was  lost 
utterly.  When  he  lifted  his  eyelids  to  the  pain  he  could 
see  nothing  but  vortices  of  white  particles  in  chaos.  He 
was  enveloped  in  a  smoke  of  powdered  ice  and  he  could  not 
guess  which  way  to  turn. 

He  ran  blundering  with  tne  complete  cowardice  of  a  child 
m  a  nightmare.  He  slammed  into  trees  and  bruised  his 
forehead  on  their  columns  of  ice.  He  threshed  through 
bushes  that  were  but  stalactites  crackling  as  he  fell  among 
them. 

He  remembered  with  aggravated  fear  that  lost  men 
wander  in  circles  till  they  drop.  He  tried  to  go  straight, 
but  the  world  was  all  circles,  spirals,  whorls,  intortions,  the 
scrawls  of  a  madman's  penmanship. 

The  ground  shot  upward  through  the  tumbled  sky.  '  The 
horizon  was  just  beyond  his  eyelashes.  He  was  knee-deep 
and  elbow-deep  in  the  horizons.  The  universe  had  fallen 
to  ruin  in  a  thunder  of  white  plaster  and  there  was  no 


THE   EPILOGUE  33 

longer  any  down  or  up  or  north  or  south,  east,  west,  forward, 
or  backward. 

He  was  as  devoid  of  reason  as  the  demoniac  tempest  when, 
at  last,  he  was  blown  against  something  like  a  wall.  It  was 
a  wall,  a  wall  of  pine  boards  with  the  bark  on  them.  He 
was  rejoiced  to  tears  at  finding  again  something  that  was 
gloriously  flat  and  vertical  and  rectangular,  something  built 
with  hands,  that  masterpiece  of  architecture,  a  woodshed. 

It  was  human.  It  had  design,  purpose;  men  had  built 
it  as  the  symbol  of  the  first  conquest  over  the  subzeronian 
hell — the  gorgeous  discovery  of  fire!  The  thought  reminded 
him  that  perhaps  there  was  still  warmth  on  the  desponding 
earth,  and  hope  was  rekindled  in  the  blown  ashes  of  his 
thoughts. 

He  had  something  to  fight  for  now,  and  his  wits  rallied 
like  the  remnants  of  a  defeated  army.  In  the  lee  of  the  shed 
there  was  a  little  mercy  for  the  eyes.  He  could  open  them 
and  peer  through  the  tossing  billows  and  he  could  make  out 
vaguely  and  fitfully  other  blurs  of  shadow  that  must  be  the 
other  houses  of  the  camp. 

He  thought  hard  and  pieced  together  in  his  mind  the  lay- 
out of  the  buildings,  found  himself  at  last,  and  oriented 
himself  in  the  recaptured  scene. 

Filling  his  lungs  with  air,  like  a  pearl  diver,  he  plunged 
into  the  snow  flood  and  swam  to  the  next  building,  buffeting 
and  buffeted,  but  sustained  by  that  bravest  thing  in  the 
world,  the  heart  of  man  when  he  fights  nature. 

He  won  to  his  goal.  It  was  the  dance  house!  He  would 
not  submit  to  the  mockery  of  dying  outside  a  forsaken  dance 
hall.  And  he  dived  into  the  torrent  again,  toward  the  bil- 
liard house,  and  made  it.  He  was  tiring  fast,  but  he  drove 
on  again  toward  the  cook  house. 

He  missed  it  in  the  white  darkness,  but  ran  plump  into  the 
Big  House  and  slid  along  its  wall  to  find  the  door. 

The  wind  bellowed  and  shrieked,  but  abruptly  he  heard 
an  added  cry,  and,  pushing  forward,  thrust  his  hands  against 
a  mass  of  snow-drenched  fur. 

A  human  form  turned  and  clumsy  mittened  hands  ran 
to  his.  He  peered  through  the  white  swirl  and  hardly 


34  BEAUTY 

recognized  who  it  was  before  their  noses  met  in  an  Eskimo 
salute. 

It  was  Nancy  Fleet.  She  had  bundled  herself  up  and  come 
out  after  him.  The  blizzard  had  flung  her  back  and  flat- 
tened her  against  the  wall,  but  she  had  continued  to  scream 
his  name  this  way  and  that  in  the  hope  that  he  might  hear 
it.  She  had  acted  as  a  Samaritan  Lorelei. 

Larrick  could  not  hear  what  she  said  till  they  were  out  of 
the  bluster,  but  his  heart  knew  hers  for  its  brave,  eager 
devotion,  and  she  was  suddenly  endeared  to  him  in  a  perilous 
way. 

He  was  so  weakened  by  this  contact  with  human  tender- 
ness after  the  bitter  wrestle  with  the  hate  of  nature  that  he 
could  hardly  win  to  the  door.  Nancy  took  a  vast  comfort 
and  pride  in  setting  her  arms  about  him  and  aiding  him. 
She  had  to  mock  her  own  emotion,  as  usual,  and,  as  they 
fell  through  into  the  great  room  where  the  high  flames 
choired  like  seraphim,  she  shouted,  "Enter  the  Watteau 
sheperdess  with  the  lost  ram." 

Larrick  was  too  weak  to  close  the  door,  and  it  took  all  of 
Burnley's  might  with  Nancy  Fleet's  weight  to  shut  it  in  the 
face  of  the  snow  wind  that  shot  in  like  a  flood  breaking 
through  a  crevasse. 

Larrick,  panting  and  gasping  prayers  of  thanksgiving  for 
his  safety,  tried  to  be  gallant  to  Miss  Fleet,  but  she  would 
not  be  helped.  She  helped  him  to  pull  off  the  icy  cuirass 
that  had  been  an  overcoat.  Then  they  stamped  the  little 
cargoes  of  snow  from  their  shoes  and  ran  to  the  fire  to  thaw 
themselves  out. 

Only  now  did  Larrick  realize  how  cold  he  had  been. 
He  was  a  long  while  getting  back  to  a  living  temperature,  and 
he  swung  his  arms,  beat  his  chilled  breast,  and  stamped  his 
wooden  feet  till  he  was  exhausted  before  he  was  warm. 

At  length  he  was  stretched  out  in  a  big  chair  and  toasting 
comfortably  while  Miss  Fleet  played  Hebe  with  the  whisky 
and  Mrs.  Roantree  recounted  the  theories  that  had  been 
advanced  in  his  absence. 

"The  only  thing  we  haven't  discussed  as  a  possibility  is 
murder,"  she  said. 


THE   EPILOGUE  35 

Larrick  sat  up  and  turned  to  her  with  a  gasp. 

She  was  despairful  enough  to  explain:  "People  do  get 
murdered  all  the  time.  People  disappear,  and  years  after- 
ward their  bones  are  found  or  somebody  makes  a  deathbed 
confession." 

"But  who  could  have  murdered  Miss  Clelia?"  Larrick 
demanded.  ' '  And  why  ? ' ' 

"If  I  knew  I  shouldn't  be  guessing,  should  I?"  Mrs. 
Roantree  sobbed.  "Somebody  might  have  entered  the 
poor  child's  room  and  dragged  her  out,  or  called  her  out 
into  the  woods  and  bludgeoned  her.  There  are  insane  men 
loose  in  the  forests,  half-crazy  hermits,  queer  tramps. 
The  Adirondacks  was  a  favorite  place  for  draft  evaders  in 
the  Civil  War,  and  in  the  last  war,  too.  The  Indians  used 
to  be  all  through  here — and  outlaws.  Who  can  tell  what 
terrible  creatures  might  not  have  made  away  with  her? 

"But  why?  you  say.  Well,  why  does  anybody  commit 
murder?  Yet  murders  are  committed,  fearful  murders. 
Jack-the-Ripper  atrocities,  everything  imaginable  and  un- 
imaginable gets  done.  My  God!  I  wish  that  storm  would 
stop  shrieking  so!  It  sounds  like  Clelia  crying  for  help. 
She  may  be  out  there  calling  while  we  sit  here  and  do 
nothing." 

But  there  was  nothing  to  do.  A  glance  at  the  murderous 
storm  was  enough  to  quell  any  thoughts  of  wrestling  with  it 
for  its  prey.  To  attempt  it  would  be  only  to  sacrifice  one 
certain  victim  for  an  uncertain. 

They  sat  inert,  and  forbore  even  to  wonder  aloud. 
Even  Miss  Fleet  was  beaten  and  somber.  She  mumbled  to 
Larrick:  "Please  forget  what  I  said  to  you  about  Clelia. 
She  was — she  is — she  is! — a  precious  angel,  and  I  can't 
stand  the  thought  of  anything  hurting  her." 


CHAPTER  VII 

JEFFERS  brought  them  what  food  he  could.  He  had 
fastened  a  rope  from  the  Big  House  to  the  cook  house 
and  carried  his  rough  fare  through  the  tempest  as  a  ship's 
cook  might  fight  his  way  from  the  galley  along  a  life  line 
over  a  wave-swept  deck  to  the  captain  on  the  bridge. 

He  brought  loaves  of  bread,  and  Nancy  Fleet  knelt  by  the 
fireplace  and  toasted  her  fingers  and  her  arms  faster  than  the 
slices  she  held  out  on  a  fork.  Jeffers  brought  in  some  eggs 
he  found  in  the  refrigerator  and  they  fried  them;  and 
coffee,  which  they  boiled  as  best  they  could  in  the  old- 
fashioned  way  when  fireplaces  were  kitchens. 

It  grew  dark  early  and  they  all  pretended  to  be  sleepy 
to  get  away  from  one  another's  eyes.  The  men  found  quar- 
ters in  the  rooms  of  the  departed  women  guests.  Nobody 
wanted  to  sleep  where  CleHa  had  been  and  they  left  that 
shrine  to  its  loneliness. 

The  little  Empress  had  to  be  plucked  away  from  the 
clothes  she  snuggled  in,  and  she  kept  going  back  to  the  shut 
door  and  scratching  at  it,  or  sitting  close  and  looking  back  to 
appeal  for  admittance.  She  barked  and  whined  and  refused 
to  be  held  and  comforted. 

Mrs.  Roantree  cursed  her  for  a  little  pest,  but  cuddled  her 
and  wept  over  her  and  took  her  into  her  own  bed  for  the  night. 

Larrick  tried  to  immerge  himself  in  sleep  for  blessed 
oblivion's  sake,  but  the  tumult  outside  was  repeated  in  the 
uproar  of  his  own  thoughts.  He  stole  back  to  the  fire,  but 
the  pictures  in  the  embers  were  infernal.  He  sought  a  book 
in  search  of  that  chloroform  for  unrest  which  is  one  of  the 
greatest  benefits  of  the  alphabet,  the  story-teller's  medicine. 

He  happened  upon  the  solid  portion  of  the  camp's  library 
and  plucked  from  the  shelves  the  second  volume  of  the 
Diary  of  Samuel  Pepys.  The  pronunciation  of  the  name 


THE    EPILOGUE  37 

stumped  him,  as  it  does  everybody  else,  and  he  was  in  no 
mood  to  enjoy  the  masterly  self-portraiture  of  it  or  the 
fascinating  snapshots  of  the  woeful  gayeties  of  the  Second 
Charles. 

But  he  happened  on  one  entry  that  mentioned  the  attempt 
at  suicide  of  a  girl  and  the  reasons  she  gave — "because  she 
did  not  like  herself,  nor  had  not  liked  herself  nor  anything 
she  did  a  great  while." 

Larrick  closed  the  book  and  meditated  the  tremendous 
eloquence  of  that  piteous  apology. 

He  wondered  if  Clelia  could  have  felt  so  about  herself. 
Larrick  had  felt  little  else  of  himself  a  great  while.  But 
Clelia,  with  all  her  beauty,  her  versatility  in  enjoyment,  her 
treasures  of  praise,  could  she  ever  have  known  such  dejec- 
tion? And  yet  who  could  fathom  the  shadows  in  another's 
soul?  Who  could  follow  the  patterns  of  another's  thoughts? 

Larrick  had  often  noticed  how  the  crisis  that  stimulates 
one  man  to  his  best  endeavor  paralyzes  another;  the  dif- 
ficulties that  make  life  interesting  for  one  make  it  hopeless 
or  hateful  to  another;  the  defeat  that  instructs  and  inspires 
one  crushes  another;  the  discovered  shame  that  makes  one 
repent  and  reform  makes  an  outlaw  of  another.  This  man 
laughs  at  a  spoken  or  a  published  insult;  that  man  cowers 
before  an  implied  reproof  and  perishes  for  a  compliment 
withheld.  This  man  in  a  fury  shoots  another;  that  man 
shoots  himself. 

Larrick  pushed  the  volume  back  into  its  own  ranks  and 
pulled  out  one  on  a  lower  shelf.  Luck  brought  him  The 
Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  by  Francis  Parkman,  great  historian, 
great  writer. 

Here  Larrick  found  congenial  food  for  his  eyes.  He 
knew  the  Indians  and  he  loved  the  stories  of  their  wiles  and 
the  wilier  ways  of  the  whites.  He  loved  the  outdoors  of 
the  book  and  the  mountain  lore.  At  length  he  fell  upon 
the  superb  pages  where  Parkman  contrasted  the  feast  and 
the  famine  of  a  New  York  tribe: 

In  the  calm  days  of  summer,  the  Ojibwa  fisherman  pushes  out 
his  birch  canoe  upon  the  great  inland  ocean  of  the  north,  and,  as 
he  gazes  down  into  the  pellucid  depths,  he  seems  like  one  balanced 


38  BEAUTY 

between  earth  and  sky.  The  watchful  fish  hawk  circles  above  his 
head;  and  below,  further  than  his  line  will  reach,  he  sees  the 
trout  glide  shadowy  and  silent  over  the  glimmering  pebbles.  .  .  . 
Again  he  explores  the  watery  labyrinths  where  the  stream  sweeps 
among  pine-tufted  islands,  or  runs,  black  and  deep,  beneath  the 
shadows  of  moss-bearded  firs;  or  he  drags  his  canoe  upon  the 
sandy  beach  and,  while  his  camp  fire  crackles  on  the  grass  plat, 
reclines  beneath  the  trees,  and  smokes  and  laughs  away  the  sultry 
hours,  in  a  lazy  luxury  of  enjoyment. 

But  when  winter  descends  upon  the  north,  sealing  up  the  foun- 
tains, fettering  the  streams,  and  turning  the  green-robed  forests 
to  shivering  nakedness,  then,  bearing  their  frail  dwellings  on  their 
backs,  the  Ojibwa  family  wander  forth  into  the  wilderness,  cheered 
only  on  their  dreary  track  by  the  whistling  of  the  north  wind  and 
the  hungry  howl  of  the  wolves.  By  the  banks  of  some  frozen 
stream  women  and  children,  men  and  dogs,  lie  crouched  together 
around  the  fire.  They  spread  their  benumbed  fingers  over  the 
embers,  while  the  wind  shrieks  through  the  fir  trees  like  the  gale 
through  the  rigging  of  a  frigate,  and  the  narrow  concave  of  the 
wigwam  sparkles  with  the  frostwork  of  their  congealed  breath. 
In  vain  they  beat  the  magic  drum  and  call  upon  their  guardian 
manitoes — the  wary  moose  keeps  aloof,  the  bear  lies  close  in  his 
hollow  tree,  and  famine  stares  them  in  the  face.  And  now  the 
hunter  can  fight  no  more  against  the  nipping  cold  and  bunding 
sleet.  Stiff  and  stark,  with  haggard  cheek  and  shriveled  lip,  he 
lies  among  the  snowdrifts,  till,  with  tooth  and  claw,  the  famished 
wildcat  strives  in  vain  to  pierce  the  frigid  marble  of  his  limbs. 

Larrick  paused.  He  had  not  read  much,  and  never  such 
living  words.  With  a  ghastly  reality  he  saw  the  lost  Clelia 
in  the  place  of  the  frozen  Indian  and  read  again  that  mar- 
velous sentence,  changing  a  word  unconsciously: 

"With  tooth  and  claw  the  famished  wildcat  strives  in 
vain  to  pierce  the  frigid  marble  of  her  limbs." 

This  was  unendurably  actual,  and  Larrick  gave  Clelia 
up  for  lost  and  hated  the  north  with  redoubled  hate  now 
that  he  had  surrendered  to  its  spite  the  fairest  thing  he  had 
found  among  its  beauties. 

One  thing  was  certain :  the  perfect  sculpture  of  her  marble 
should  not  be  left  to  the  obscene  brutality  that  spring  and 
summer  would  wreak  upon  it.  He  must  find  her  and  bring 
her  in. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HE  went  to  the  window  to  look  into  the  storm.  The 
glass  was  so  cold  that  it  chilled  him  to  stand  close. 
But  he  noted  that  the  virulence  of  the  gale  had  diminished. 
The  wild  din  of  it  had  ceased  and  there  was  left  a  kind  of 
petulant  melancholy  like  the  aftermath  of  a  woman's 
hysterics. 

The  sleet  had  gone  and  there  was  only  a  trouble  of  flitting 
snow,  tapping  at  the  window  as  with  finger  tips  and  floating 
by,  yet  always  there. 

The  wind  had  a  wretched  soul  of  its  own.  Larrick  found 
it  hard  to  believe  that  the  wind  was  not  some  forlorn  spirit 
locked  out  of  the  house  and  suffering  with  the  bitterness  of 
the  night. 

There  was  womanishness  in  its  wail  and  in  its  gusts  of 
skulking  passion.  In  sudden  recurrences  of  wrath  it  seized 
the  trees  and  shook  them  till  the  snow  flew  from  them  in 
showers.  It  swept  a  spray  of  snow  from  the  ridges  of  snow. 
It  caught  up  double  armloads  of  snow  and  ran  to  the  lake 
with  them.  It  scooped  out  furrows,  scalloped  the  edges  of 
smothered  walls,  took  a  perverse  delight  in  burying  the  road 
and  baring  the  terraces. 

The  lake  had  long  since  vanished.  It  must  have  been 
coated  with  a  thick  armor  of  ice  to  uphold  the  burden  of 
snow  that  turned  it  into  a  white  and  wind-wrung  prairie. 

The  stars,  no  longer  hidden,  were  crystals  of  snow  in  a 
cold-blue  field  of  heaven.  The  moon  was  a  round  sheet  of 
ice,  very  cold,  very  far,  very  lonely,  very  still. 

In  the  heavens  all  was  frozen  indifference — the  earth  was 
pallid  and  condemned. 

Larrick  had  ridden  herd  in  dust  storms  that  blinded  and 
choked,  but  never  in  the  snow.  He  had  been  told  of  mounds 
of  poor  frozen  cattle,  piled  up  in  hillocks,  of  cowboys  freezing 


40  BEAUTY 

to  the  saddle  or  curling  up  in  the  bellies  of  their  frozen 
bronchos  and  dying  there  under  a  white  shroud. 

It  terrified  him  with  a  peculiar  terror  to  think  of  a  death 
in  the  cold.  He  hoped  with  a  violence  of  hope  that  Clelia 
had,  after  all,  been  spared  such  a  death.  She  should  go 
out  like  a  flame  or  droop  like  a  flower  over  the  edge  of  a 
silver  vase. 

It  was  under  just  such  a  clear  blue  moon-ruled  sky  that 
he  had  seen  her  first,  only  then  it  was  summer  and  the 
earth  was  carpeted  beneath  her  delicate  feet  with  grass, 
green  grass  in  a  flood  of  blue  moonlight. 

Only  a  night  ago  he  had  seen  her  dancing  on  the  veranda 
with  Coykendall  in  the  moonlight  as  the  phonograph  churned 
out  jazz  music.  He  had  suffered  at  seeing  her  dance  so 
flippantly,  so  fluently  with  another  man.  How  glad  he 
would  be  to  see  her  there  again,  even  in  another  man's  arms ! 

He  had  not  been  the  only  one  jealous  of  Coykendall. 
Frewin  had  been  frankly  ugly.  There  had  been  a  quarrel. 
What  if  Coykendall  had  somehow  coaxed  Clelia  out  into 
the  blue  midnight  and  frightened  her  so  that  she  had  run 
away  from  him. 

He  might  have  pursued  her  and  killed  her  in  a  spasm 
of  black  wrath,  leaving  her  hidden  body  to  be  made  marble 
by  the  storm. 

Or  she  might  have  escaped  him  and  lost  herself  somewhere, 
wandered  too  far,  slid  down  a  ravine  and  broken  her  bones. 
What  if  she  had  stepped  into  one  of  the  steel  traps  set  for 
annoying  animals?  She  might  have  slipped  into  one  of  these 
leaping  streams  and  drowned  in  a  trout  pool. 

She  might  still  be  alive.  Some  little  of  that  abounding 
vitality  of  hers  might  remain  and  he  might  save  her  yet. 

He  could  not  endure  to  stand  and  gaze.  He  must  keep 
moving.  Stealing  about  quietly,  he  found  heavy  wraps  and 
boots  and  slipped  out  into  the  hushed  air. 

A  numbing  chill  invaded  his  frame.  His  skin  was  not 
trained  to  the  cold.  The  infinite  little  windows  of  the  pores 
had  not  learned  to  open  and  shut  for  all  weathers.  But  he 
drove  forward  toward  the  looming  mountains. 

His  feet  broke  through  the  crust  and  sank  deep  and 


THE   EPILOGUE  41 

must  be  hoisted  out  with  effort.  It  was  as  if  he  trampled 
glass  that  crackled  and  cut  and  let  him  down  into  white 
clay. 

He  made  little  progress,  floundering,  falling,  disgusting 
himself  with  his  awkwardness. 

He  saw  that  he  would  have  to  have  snowshoes.  He  did 
not  know  where  the  guide  kept  them.  He  did  not  know 
how  to  put  them  on. 

He  turned  about  and  retreated  to  the  house,  doddering  like 
a  man  on  broken  stilts. 

He  flung  into  his  bed  and  shivered,  wondering  how  he 
could  endure  the  waiting.  But  sleep  mercifully  set  his  clock 
forward  by  many  hours. 

The  next  morning  he  woke  early  before  the  others. 

He  dressed  quickly  and  sought  the  fireplace  and  made  him- 
self much  coffee.  Then  he  asked  the  guide  for  snowshoes. 

Jeffers  was  surly  about  Larrick's  plan  to  go  out  again. 
The  uselessness  of  it  offended  him.  He  refused  to  be  an 
accessory.  Larrick  hardly  persuaded  him  to  produce  a  pair 
of  snowshoes  and  fasten  them  on  to  his  ankles  with  thongs. 
Jeffers  was  not  even  amused  as  Larrick  suffered  the  usual 
initiations  into  the  strange  footgear.  He  walked  as  on 
tennis  racquets.  He  stepped  on  his  own  broad  soles  and 
could  not  tell  which  foot  to  lift.  He  fell  in  every  imaginable 
humiliating  way. 

But  at  last  he  learned  to  shuffle  along  somehow,  and  he 
struck  forth  into  the  white  desert,  across  the  clearing  into 
the  woods,  eager  to  be  away  before  anyone  else  could  vol- 
unteer to  come  along.  He  was  most  afraid  of  Miss  Fleet's 
company.  She  was  too  confusing.  She  thought  of  so  many 
things  and  phases  of  things.  He  wanted  to  think  of  one — 
Clelia's  fate. 

The  going  was  maddeningly  perverse.  The  blizzard  had 
assailed  him,  but  now  the  quiet  world  lay  mute  and  mocked 
him  with  its  contempt.  It  made  no  response  to  his  struggles 
except  when  he  blundered  against  some  fir  trees  with 
snow  heaped  along  the  boughs  and  beaten  into  the  needles. 
Then  wagonloads  of  snow  were  emptied  upon  him,  filling 
his  hood  and  getting  down  his  neck. 


42  BEAUTY 

Old  white  logs  tripped  and  spilled  him  and  he  bruised 
and  cut  his  face  on  the  broken  plate  glass  of  the  snow. 

He  panted  with  the  effort  and  streamed  with  sweat  that 
turned  cold  upon  him  when  he  sank  down,  idly  studying 
the  florid  autographs  of  the  wind  or  the  tiny  footprints  of 
mice  and  squirrels,  the  trident  tracks  of  hungry  birds  and 
the  trails  left  by  rabbits  that  hopped  and  rested. 

In  one  of  his  pauses  he  bethought  him  of  a  picture  of 
Clelia  that  he  had  torn  out  of  a  newspaper  a  few  days  after 
he  had  met  her  for  the  first  time.  He  had  carried  it  in 
his  wallet  ever  since,  and  he  wondered  if  he  still  had  it. 

He  took  off  a  glove  and  groped  inside  his  coats  for  his 
pocketbook.  He  found  what  he  sought,  a  ragged  bit  of  a 
Sunday  supplement,  picturing  various  personages  who  had 
taken  part  in  a  lawn  f£te  for  charity.  Yes,  there  she  was, 
"Miss  Clelia  Blakeney  as  Puck." 

The  paper  was  creased  and  blurred  with  long  wear,  but 
the  sight  of  her  picture  evoked  her  as  she  had  first  stolen 
into  his  ken. 

At  the  edge  of  a  millionaire's  empty  lawn  there  had  been  a 
stone  wall  that  kept  a  thicket  of  trees  from  marching  into 
the  little  plain.  A  searchlight  from  the  roof  had  gone 
exploring  the  edge  of  that  wood.  Suddenly  it  had  dis- 
covered the  figure  of  Puck  come  to  life  from  Shakespeare's 
pages — a  lissome  girl  in  the  clothes  of  a  lad  of  that  period, 
with  a  touch  of  fantasy  about  the  garb. 

A  clatter  of  palm  applause  from  the  audience  in  the  dark 
had  greeted  her,  and  Frewin,  who  had  brought  Larrick  to 
his  first  lawn  affair,  had  mumbled  to  him: 

"That's  Clelia!  That's  the  Clelia  Blakeney  I've  told  you 
about  so  much!" 

Larrick  had  warned  himself  at  once  that  he  must  not  fall 
in  love  with  her  at  first  sight,  as  he  was  preparing  to  do, 
before  Frewin  gave  her  a  name;  for  Frewin  was  his  friend 
and  had  already  picked  her  out  for  himself  long  before. 

Larrick  was  ashamed  to  feel  that  this  knowledge  had  not 
at  once  quenched  his  interest,  but  had  indeed  made  the 
girl  just  a  little  more  compelling. 

He  had  watched  her  as  she  leaped  from  the  wall  to  the 


MISS  CLELIA  BLAKENEY  AS  PUCK,  SUDDENLY  COME  TO  LIFE  FROM 
SHAKESPEARE'S  PAGES 


THE   EPILOGUE  43 

grass  and  came  dancing  eerily,  darkling,  swooping  on  little 
scalloped  fluttering  wings,  poising  on  one  toe  so  lightly  that 
she  seemed  not  to  weigh  down  the  clover  beneath  her, 
swirling  and  pirouetting,  then  halting  to  recite  a  bit  of  verse, 
and  finally,  with  uplifted  hands,  summoning  from  the 
woods  a  pack  of  fairies  and  elves,  children  who  swarmed 
over  the  wall  and  filled  the  lawn  with  a  scurry  of  robes  and 
a  glamour  of  bare  legs  and  arms  and  feet. 

Larrick  could  see  Clelia  at  her  invocation  and  could  hear 
her  voice,  that  crisp,  pointed  New  York  voice  of  elegant 
carelessness  and  nervous  ease,  almost  the  first  New  York 
girl's  voice  he  had  ever  heard. 

Then  there  had  been  a  crowd  of  swells  to  share  the  vision 
with  him.  Now  in  this  Adirondack  revocation  she  danced 
for  him  alone.  He  reveled  in  her  grace  like  another  Herod, 
and  he  was  offering  her  the  half  of  his  kingdom  when  a  flurry 
of  snow  ran  across  the  clearing  like  a  curtain  and  shut  her 
from  his  imagination.  He  could  study  the  picture,  but  he 
could  not  make  her  dance  again. 

Still,  the  spell  was  left  and  he  was  assured  that  she  could 
not  have  been  marked  out  for  such  a  fate  as  freezing  to 
death.  She  would  dance  out  of  life  as  she  danced  in,  for 
she  was  always  dancing.  There  could  not  be  cruelty  enough, 
even  in  this  cruel  world,  to  congeal  such  beauty. 

He  went  back  to  the  house  with  a  heart  full  of  confidence 
that  she  had  simply  fled  upon  some  errand  that  her  own 
wisdom  had  made  necessary  to  her  all-important  happiness. 

4 


CHAPTER  IX 

TARRICK'S  recovery  from  despair  encouraged  the  others 
L-/  and  they  settled  down  to  the  killing  of  time  until  their 
sentence  should  expire.  They  played  cards  and  accepted 
Mrs.  Roantree's  temper  with  good  grace.  She  made  and 
unmade  rules  as  suited  her  hand  and  roundly  abused  the 
others  and  herself  with  characteristic  vigor. 

That  night,  as  they  played,  they  heard  the  wind  rising 
anew,  and  the  noise  of  it  was  disheartening.  They  were 
remanded  to  prison  for  a  new  term. 

The  gale  came  back  like  a  sea,  only  it  came  now  from  the 
opposite  quarter.  It  kept  a  great  bluster,  but  it  seemed 
to  have  no  other  purpose  than  the  reversal  of  the  mischief 
of  the  other  storm. 

It  raised  sails  of  snow  on  the  lake  and  sent  across  convoys 
of  ghostly  vessels  with  broad  white  spinnakers  swooping. 

By  morning  it  had  swept  the  lake  almost  clean,  revealing 
a  vast  tract  of  flawed  glass. 

Larrick  was  cast  down  by  the  renewal  of  the  evil  temper 
of  the  weather  and  by  the  frustration  of  his  escape  to  the 
city,  where  he  hoped  at  least  to  find  Clelia  and  learn  what 
she  had  done,  and  why. 

In  his  discouragement  his  optimism  began  to  freeze  again. 
His  imagination  began  to  play  once  more  with  its  dreadful 
visions  of  Clelia  as  the  nun  martyr  of  the  winter's  maledic- 
tions. He  grew  restive  to  resume  the  hunt. 

He  had  not  searched  the  island  in  the  long  lake  nor  the 
other  shore.  He  could  cross  the  water  easily  now  and  save 
miles  of  stumbling  travel. 

He  bundled  up  again  and  went  out  in  the  deathly  cold. 
He  had  not  gone  far  when  he  heard  Miss  Fleet  hailing  him. 

"Wait  for  me!"  she  cried. 

He  turned  and  saw  her  plunging  toward  him  through  the 


THE   EPILOGUE  45 

uncertain  drifts,  now  towering  on  a  pinnacle  of  ice,  now 
thigh-deep  in  the  snow.  She  was  tremendously  wrapped  up, 
but  her  cheeks  were  like  poppies  and  her  eyes  keen  as  steel. 

He  told  her  of  his  plan  of  exploration  and  she  said: 

"I  know  you  don't  want  me  and  so  I'm  coming  along. 
There's  always  something  interesting  in  being  where  you're 
not  wanted." 

"You're  mighty  welcome,"  he  lied. 

She  widened  her  eyes  in  acknowledgment  of  the  perjury 
and  swung  along  with  him.  At  the  edge  of  the  lake  he  hesi- 
tated. He  had  never  set  foot  before  on  frozen  water  and 
he  could  hardly  believe  that  it  would  hold  him  up,  though 
he  could  see  that  it  was  thicker  than  the  floor  of  any  bridge 
he  had  ever  crossed.  Miss  Fleet  saw  that  he  was  afraid 
and,  laughing,  launched  herself  out  and  coasted  on  her  feet 
as  she  had  done  since  childhood.. 

Larrick  tried  to  copy  her,  and  slipped,  sprawled,  spun,  and 
fell  with  a  crash.  She  picked  him  up  and  did  not  laugh. 
She  had  an  idea  that  it  would  be  more  fun  to  skate.  She 
told  him  to  wait  for  her  and  turned  back  to  the  house. 
Glad  of  being  alone  again,  Larrick  ventured  along  the 
water's  edge  with  gingerly  steps,  blinking  at  the  sharp  light 
that  beat  up  from  the  polished  surface. 

And  suddenly,  as  he  worked  his  way  round  one  jutting 
ledge  of  rock,  and  bent  to  pass  beneath  the  far  outflung 
branch  of  a  great  cedar,  he  found  Clelia. 

She  was  right  beneath  him.  He  had  almost  trodden  upon 
her,  where  she  lay  like  her  own  reflection,  fixed  and  embedded 
in  her  own  looking-glass,  an  imprisoned  image  seized  and 
held  fast  by  the  mirror  that  loved  it. 

Her  perfect  body  was  swathed  in  a  silk  nightgown,  its 
delicate  wrinkles  clustering  about  her  every  outline,  creamily 
rippling  with  an  eager  tenderness  over  each  rounded  contour. 

Her  hands  were  gabled  as  in  prayer  at  her  young  breast. 
Her  eyes  were  closed.  Her  hair,  dispread  and  unbound, 
was  afloat  like  a  mist  in  the  ice,  as  if  blown  back  on  a  wind, 
disclosing  on  her  white,  white  forehead  a  deep  gash,  and 
one  or  two  drops  of  blood  frozen  there  into  rubies. 


46  BEAUTY 

Larrick  cast  himself  down  to  gather  and  lift  her  in  his 
arms,  but  a  wall  of  adamant  rebuffed  him.  In  a  surge  of 
wild  love  he  bent  to  waken  her  with  a  kiss,  and  kissed  ice. 

When  he  flung  up  his  head  in  torment  his  lips  were  already 
frozen  to  the  mirror,  and  they  bled  as  he  tore  them  away. 
He  knelt  there,  beating  on  the  crystal  door,  crying  her  name: 

"Clelia!    Clelia!" 


CHAPTER  X 

NANCY  FLEET  had  followed  Larrick  because  she  liked 
to  be  with  him  and  had  rejoiced  in  the  prospect  of 
scaling  snowy  peaks  at  his  side. 

She  was  so  certain  that  Clelia  would  not  be  found  that 
she  had  dismissed  her  from  her  thoughts. 

She  had  laughed  at  Larrick's  timidity  before  so  silly  a 
peril  as  ice,  because  Norry  Frewin  had  told  her  that  Larrick 
was  the  bravest  man  on  earth.  But  like  every  other  bravest 
man,  Larrick  had  his  specialties  in  heroism,  and  there  were 
realms  where  he  was  more  timid  than  a  little  girl.  A  frozen 
lake  was  one  of  the  dangers  that  he  knew  not  of. 

Nancy  Fleet  had  rejoiced  to  see  the  hero  from  farthest 
Texas  shudder  at  a  risk  that  children  took  with  shrieks  of 
laughter.  Reveling  in  his  innocence  of  ice,  she  welcomed  the 
chance  of  revealing  to  him  the  godlike  privilege  of  skates. 
She  wanted  to  fledge  his  feet  with  wings  of  steel  and  make 
another  Mercury  of  him.  Besides,  she  wanted  to  cow  him 
still  further,  she  wanted  both  to  teach  him  new  delights  and 
to  break  him  as  he  broke  bronchos — so  that  he  would  accept 
harness  and  direction  from  her  and  regard  her  with  respect 
as  a  dear  teacher. 

Commanding  him  not  to  budge  till  she  returned,  she 
had  darted  off  for  the  house,  for  she  remembered  a  brief  out- 
ing of  a  previous  winter  and  managed  to  turn  up  two  pairs  of 
rusty  skates.  When  she  came  back  the  blades  glistened  and 
clanked  at  her  hip  like  weapons — as  indeed  they  were. 

Larrick  was  not  where  she  had  left  him,  but  his  footprints 
were  large  and  deep  in  the  crust  and  she  ran  to  overtake 
him.  She  ran  right  gracefully,  bending  beneath  the  pine 
branches  and  calling  to  him  once  more,  her  comrade  cry  of, 
"Wait  for  me!" 

She  made  him  out  where  he  crouched  on  the  ice,  and 


48  BEAUTY 

hailed  him  with  all  cheer,  but  as  she  came  up  to  him  she  saw 
that  the  eyes  he  turned  to  her  were  aghast,  his  face  leaden 
and  sick,  his  lips  a  blur  of  red. 

She  thought  that  he  must  have  fallen  again  —  broken 
bones,  perhaps.  She  stumbled  forward  with  anxious 
questions,  the  old  eternal  phrase,  "What's  the  matter?" 
Dumbly  he  pointed  with  a  quaking  hand. 

She  approached  to  look  across  his  shoulder  and  saw  in  the 
ice,  not  her  own  expected  reflection,  nor  his,  nor  yet  the 
returned  aspect  of  the  sky,  but  Clelia — Clelia  dreadfully  in 
repose,  fallen  terribly  asleep  in  her  prayers. 

So  lifelike  she  was  that  Nancy  watched  for  her  bosom  to 
breathe.  Her  own  breath  waited  till  she  smothered,  then 
she  began  to  pant,  to  gasp.  She  dropped  slowly  to  her 
knees  at  the  side  of  Larrick  and  stared  at  the  water  whist 
to  ice,  and  the  girl  bewitched  in  its  crystal  magic. 

So  beautiful  Clelia  was,  so  long  and  slender  and  stately, 
so  more  than  humanly  pure,  that  Nancy's  first  tears  were 
for  the  very  perfection  of  her  grace,  the  unimaginable  peace 
of  her  slumber. 

There  was  such  absence  of  the  dross  of  life  about  her 
that  she  was  mere  beauty ;  she  seemed  not  anything  that  had 
been  born  and  had  grown,  had  laughed  and  cried  and  run 
about  the  world,  but,  rather,  something  created  anew, 
complete  in  the  rapture  of  a  genius.  She  was  a  work  of  art, 
and  mystic  tears  were  summoned  by  the  sheer  felicity  of  her 
design — such  tears  as  steal  out  upon  the  eyelids  when 
music  flings  up  like  a  rush  of  sudden  doves,  or  when  a  line 
of  divine  poetry  is  encountered;  when  a  mighty  architecture 
looms  in  enormous  emotion,  or  a  landscape  is  found  idylli- 
cally  dispread  before  the  wanderer  and  speaks  to  him  with 
a  gigantic  tenderness. 

So  Nancy's  first  reply  to  Clelia's  mute  appeal  was  a  few 
tears  of  reverence.  Then  came  the  gush  of  pity  for  the 
girl  who  had  ceased  to  partake  of  the  life  she  had  graced, 
and  had  come  so  untimely  to  be  fastened  in  the  translucent 
granite  of  this  fairy  tomb. 

Nancy  fell  forward,  her  brow  on  her  arm.  The  first  of 
her  words  that  Larrick  understood  were  these: 


THE   EPILOGUE  49 

"Forgive  me,  Clelia,  forgive  me!  You  poor,  sweet,  sweet 
child!" 

Larrick's  heart  seemed  to  break  again,  to  split  open  in  a 
new  place,  and  spill  its  blood  into  his  body.  That  such 
a  girl  as  Clelia  should  be  dead  and  done  for  was  maddening. 
That  such  a  girl  as  Nancy  should  be  racked  with  such 
mourning  and  such  remorse  was  all  but  unbearable.  The 
successive  realizations  of  the  cruelties  of  the  world  and  of 
this  deed  beat  upon  him  ruthlessly.  But  he  was  the  sort  of 
man  that  never  yields  till  he  is  crushed. 

Instinct  braced  him  as  it  braces  strong  souls  to  endure 
and  endure  and  endure,  till  sometimes  it  seems  that  strength 
is  given  for  spite  to  certain  slaves  so  that  punishment  may 
be  prolonged  upon  them  and  new  torments  tried  out.  By 
such  persons  in  their  agony  a  renewing  physician  seems  to 
stand  as  one  stood  by  in  the  ancient  inquisitions  that  Chris- 
tians practiced  on  one  another  to  revive  the  victim  of  torture 
when  he  fainted,  lest  he  cheat  the  torturer  of  a  final  luxury. 

Larrick  knelt  on  the  ice  and  accepted  grief  after  grief 
that  shook  him  as  if  a  monster  stood  over  him  and  smote 
him  with  the  head  of  an  ax  again  and  again — not  with  the 
blade,  for  that  would  have  ended  his  pain,  but  with  the 
thudding  head  of  it. 

He  would  not  break,  because  he  could  not  break,  or  grovel, 
or  cry  "Enough!"  But  there  was  no  love  left  in  him  for 
the  world  or  the  management  of  the  world. 

A  man  who  was  a  soldier  at  the  battle  of  Omdurman  told 
me  (years  later,  when  he  had  become  a  preacher)  that  after 
the  fallen  Mahdists  had  killed  several  men  who  bent  to  help 
them  where  they  lay  intermingled  with  the  British  wounded, 
the  order  was  given  to  destroy  the  fanatics,  and  he  was 
so  revolted  by  the  hideous  business  that  he  stood  up  and 
shook  his  fist  at  God,  calling  him  dirty  names  and  daring 
him  to  come  down  and  fight  fair. 

So  Larrick  felt  now  a  mad  impulse  to  leap  on  a  good  top- 
horse  and  charge  the  heavens.  As  High-Chin  Bob,  in  Charles 
Badger  Clark's  poem,  belly-roped  a  red-eyed  lion  and  dragged 
him  over  the  mountains  in  a  never-ending  chase,  so  Larrick 
would  have  been  glad  to  dare  the  sky  and  drag  that  Bad 


5o  BEAUTY 

Man  along  the  stars.  But  this  was  only  one  of  those  wild 
frenzies  of  a  soul  in  a  throe  of  grief,  and  its  futility  was  but 
another  humiliation. 

In  his  helplessness  he  turned  for  company  to  the  fellow 
victim  at  his  side.  He  put  his  hands  down  about  Nancy 
Fleet  and  lifted  her,  gathered  her  in  his  arms,  and  huddled 
her  close.  There  was  the  possibility  of  a  little  further 
bitterness  in  the  remembrance  that  she  had  been  in  his 
arms  before,  and  in  such  a  different  spirit  that  they  seemed 
to  be  hardly  the  same  people. 

Now  he  felt  that  in  that  earlier  audacity  of  his,  when 
she  had  seemed  to  be  merely  a  knowing  accessory  in  a 
flirtation  whose  charm  was  its  peril,  he  had  laid  impious 
hands  upon  a  saint.  Seeing  how  capable  she  was  of  tender- 
ness for  Clelia,  and  how  quick  she  was  with  shame  for  a  few 
little  jealousies,  he  recognized  in  her  a  goodliness  he  had 
never  suspected. 

Now  they  were  as  brother  and  sister  united  in  the  bereave- 
ment of  a  little  sister.  He  had  been  the  lover  of  both 
Clelia  and  Nancy,  and  now  fate  had  driven  romance  from 
their  hearts  and  made  them  blood  kindred. 

Larrick's  eyes  went  back  to  Clelia,  and  he  saw  her  trans- 
formed, too,  by  the  anointment  of  death.  Everything  she 
had  been  and  done  was  viewed  in  retrospect,  forgiven  be- 
cause it  was  past,  understood  because  it  was  finished, 
sanctified  because  it  was  already  antiquity. 

He  winced  to  remember  how  flippantly  she  had  been 
discussed,  her  dare-deviltry,  her  frivolity,  her  impish  reck- 
lessness, her  flirtations,  her  volatilities.  These  were  all  now 
the  records  of  an  angel,  and  what  blame  inhered  in  them 
fell  upon  those  who  remarked  them,  not  upon  the  one  who 
committed  them. 

There  was  a  benediction  upon  her  and  a  malediction  upon 
her  critics,  a  dreadful  accusation  against  those  who  had  even 
lovingly  found  fault  with  her. 

She  was  now  the  alabaster  effigy  of  Sancta  Clelia,  and 
her  withdrawal  from  the  world  robbed  it  of  a  precious 
visitor,  leaving  the  earth  more  ugly  and  empty  than  ever. 

He  lifted  his  eyes  from  her  to  the  hills  and  to  the  sky 


THE   EPILOGUE  51 

and  found  in  them  no  help,  no  solace,  no  reliance.  The 
hills  smoked  with  blown  snow  like  sullen  craters;  the  sky 
was  closed  with  clouds  of  murky  turbulence.  The  flowers 
were  buried,  and  the  trees  were  stark,  and  the  planet  was  a 
bleak  moon. 

To  his  desert-trained  eyes  white  suggested  alkali,  and  the 
world  seemed  caked  and  damned  to  an  alkaline  wilderness. 

The  only  warmth  in  it  and  the  only  life  in  it  were  in  the 
throbbing  body  of  the  partner  of  his  grief.  He  could  and 
he  must  find  use  for  his  strength  in  upholding  her. 

The  only  help  he  could  give  Clelia  was  to  release  her  from 
the  ice  and  render  her  the  poor  tribute  of  burial.  The  word, 
like  all  the  rest  of  its  tribe,  nauseated  him  in  connection  with 
Clelia  and  what  she  had  been. 

He  looked  at  her  again  with  pity  and  straightened  sharply, 
for  he  noted  anew  that  gash  in  her  placid  brow  and  those 
gems  of  her  blood.  Now  he  was  kindled  with  the  feeling 
that  he  must  also  revenge  her. 

He  ceased  to  hate  God  for  permitting  this  infamy  and 
began  to  hate  the  unknown  human  whom  he  accused  of  the 
crime.  He  could  not  punish  the  Deity,  but  it  was  a  man's 
privilege  and  his  duty  to  exact  atonement  for  human  ferocity. 
He  promised  the  guilty  one  all  the  hell  he  could  inflict  in 
recompense  for  this  deed. 


CHAPTER  XI 

RIEP  wears  out,  weeping  runs  down  automatically. 

By  and  by  Nancy  ceased  to  sob  and  rested  mo- 
tionless save  for  a  few  last  twitches  of  anguish.  But  once 
she  had  come  out  of  the  temple  of  woe  she  lost  the  right  to  be 
in  Larrick's  arms. 

They  were  no  longer  brother  and  sister,  but  man  and 
woman.  She  put  away  his  arms  almost  blushingly.  He 
accepted  his  dismissal. 

He  rose  and  hoisted  her  by  the  elbows  till  she  stood  by  his 
side.  They  were  mutually  embarrassed  again,  and  Clelia 
was  their  common  embarrassment. 

"What  shall  we  do  now?"  Nancy  faltered.  "What  can 
we  do?" 

"We've  got  to  get  her  out  of  the  ice  first." 

"But  how?" 

Ice  was  as  hard  and  cold  and  stubborn  and  brittle  as  the 
rest  of  the  hateful  world,  and  it  must  either  be  broken  or 
melted. 

The  two  witnesses  were  so  exhausted  by  the  storm  of 
emotions  they  had  lived  through  that  their  wits  were  be- 
numbed. They  felt  the  need  of  council. 

They  turned  to  go  back  to  the  house  for  aid  and  advice. 

They  paused.  It  seemed  not  right  to  leave  Clelia  alone 
there  in  her  scant  covering  in  that  chill  bed.  Yet  she  was 
all  too  safe.  They  could  have  gone  away  for  many  months 
in  the  assurance  that  until  the  spring  came,  the  tardy  spring 
that  must  work  upon  these  mountain  lakes,  Clelia  would 
suffer  no  change  soever. 

The  summer  of  passion  that  had  made  her  and  ripened 
her  would  soon  destroy  her  loveliness,  but  the  winter  that 
had  slain  her  would  guard  her  well. 

So  they  moved  off  and  went  slowly  to  the  house,  hobbling 


THE   EPILOGUE  53 

and  shuffling  and  plunging  over  and  through  the  snow. 
Nancy  fell  again  and  again,  and  he  picked  her  up.  At 
length  he  set  his  arm  about  her  and  kept  it  there.  She  began 
to  weep  again  and  to  grope  forward  blindly.  As  they 
approached  the  house  like  two  lovers  they  were  seen  from 
the  windows  and  wondered  at ;  waited  for. 

Mrs.  Roantree,  staring  at  them,  was  startled,  then  in- 
dignant, then  amiable  as  usual.  She  could  not  see  that 
Nancy  was  weeping.  She  fretted : 

"What  on  earth  possesses  those  two  idiots?  Haven't 
they  any  sense  of  decency  at  all  ? " 

Burnley  suggested:  "Perhaps  they  are  engaged  and  don't 
care  who  knows  it.  I  thought  Larrick  was  crazy  about 
Clelia — but  her  absence  must  have  cured  him." 

Mrs.  Roantree  had  not  taken  Larrick  seriously  as  a  suitor 
for  Clelia.  She  said,  "Well,  Nancy  is  a  nice  girl,  and  if  she 
can  stand  his  rough  ways  and  he  can  stand  her  temper  they 
ought  to  make  a  happy  pair." 

Burnley  and  Randel  opened  the  door  for  them  with 
laughter,  and  Mrs.  Roantree  waited,  smiling,  with  the  light 
taunts  one  saves  for  those  who  announce  their  engagement, 
publish  their  infatuation. 

Nancy  put  out  her  hands  at  Burnley's  first  joke  and 
pleaded: 

"Oh,  don't!    For  God's  sake!    Clelia!    We  found  Clelia!" 

"Where?  Why  doesn't  she  come  in?  What's  happened?" 
Mrs.  Roantree  demanded. 

Nancy  flung  herself  on  a  great  couch  and  hid  her  face  in 
her  arms.  They  turned  to  Larrick  and  he  mumbled: 

"She's  out  there — down  there — in  the  ice!" 

Frantic  questions  dragged  the  truth  from  him  piecemeal. 
Mrs.  Roantree  went  quite  mad.  The  ancient  autocrat 
became  a  terrified  child,  humbled  and  incoherent  as  any 
farmer's  wife. 

She  was  for  darting  out  to  find  Clelia  and  take  her  up 
in  her  arms.  She  had  to  be  restrained.  Her  days  for 
moving  through  snowdrifts  were  long  done,  but  she  fought 
and  wrestled,  thinking  of  every  desperate  sorrow  this  sorrow 
meant  to  so  many. 


54  BEAUTY 

"Her  poor  mother!  Her  father!  He  idolized  her !  They 
trusted  her  to  me.  What  will  they  think  of  me  now  ?  And 
to  think  what  I  said  of  the  blessed  child!  There  was 
nothing  1.1  didn't  accuse  her  of!  Oh,  I  ought  to  be  struck 
dead — I  ought  to  have  my  vile  tongue  torn  out.  And  all 
the  while  the  poor  baby  was  dead !  Dead !  and  I  was  blaming 
her  for  the  bother."  On  and  on  she  ran  through  all  the  paths 
grief  takes  for  its  own  increase.  Her  anger 'came  to  her 
rescue  at  last  and  she  turned  on  the  men  she  had  kept  busy 
and  cried:  "But  why  do  you  stand  there  gaping?  Why 
aren't  you  out  there  bringing  the  baby  in?  Must  she  lie 
out  there  in  the  ice  forever?  The  darling  is  cold!  Won't 
you  hurry  ?  Hurry ! " 

While  she  stormed  like  a  deposed  queen  who  has  only  her 
wrath  left  of  all  her  pride,  the  maid  Berthe  had  heard  the 
news  and  run  away  to  a  distance  where  she  could  pour  out 
her  cries  without  insubordination. 

JefEers,  having  heard  her  wailing,  came  upon  her  where 
she  lay  in  the  snow,  freezing  as  she  screamed.  He  picked 
her  up  and  carried  her  in  and  then  dashed  to  the  lakeside 
and  pondered  the  situation.  He  shook  his  head  stupidly 
and  flung  off  tears  that  surprised  his  hard  eyes  and  shamed 
him  in  the  presence  of  Kemp,  who  followed  him. 

"A  pirty  thing  as  ever  was,"  Jeffers  muttered,  "and  as 
nice  a  little  lady  as  could  be." 

"And  knew  more  about  a  car  than  what  I  did,"  the  chauf- 
feur contributed.  "Afraid  of  nothin',  too.  What  could 
have  brought  her  down  here  like  that?  And  who  gave  her 
that  gash?" 

"Who  was  she  prayin'  to?  If  you  knew  that  you'd  know 
who  it  was  done  it." 

They  came  soon  to  practical  conclusions  concerning  the 
necessary  tasks,  the  odious  realities  and  harsh  circumstances 
that  belittle  the  awe  of  death;  the  making  of  coffins,  the 
setting  of  them  upon  trestles,  the  carrying  of  them  on 
shoulders  to  hearses,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  tasks  of  carpenters 
and  joiners,  undertakers  and  embalmers,  hack  drivers  and 
grave  diggers — the  mob  that  must  walk  across  the  solemnities 
of  grief. 


THE   EPILOGUE  55 

Larrick  found  Jeffers  and  Kemp  when  he  left  the  house  to 
escape  the  sight  of  Mrs.  Roantree's  suffering.  Nancy  would 
have  been  glad  to  follow  him,  but  she  had  to  stand  by  the 
older  woman. 

It  shocked  Larrick  to  find  the  two  men  staring  at  Clelia 
in  her  nightgown.  He  felt  an  impulse  to  fling  something 
over  her,  but  the  fatuity  of  that  checked  him. 

Jeffers  answered  the  question  in  Larrick's  mind: 

"We  can't  leave  her  there,  o'  course,  though  she  wouldn't 
change  till  come  next  Aperl.  One  of  my  jobs  is  gettin'  in 
the  ice,  and  I  guess  we  got  to  cut  her  out  and  take  her  ashore, 
and  then — I  guess  we  got  to  get  over  to  town  somehow  and 
bring  in  a  nice  box.  And  there's  a  preacher  there.  He'd 
come  across  the  mountain,  I  guess,  and —  Well,  that's 
about  what's  got  to  be  done,  as  I  see  it." 

And  that  was  what  was  done.  Jeffers  brought  out  long 
saws  and  axes  and  timbers.  Standing  over  Clelia,  he  pulled 
the  saw  up  and  down  through  the  ice  in  a  great  rectangle. 
It  was  inconceivable  that  Clelia  should  not  move  or  breathe 
or  blush  or  sigh  during  all  that  time. 

Jeffers  chopped  away  a  free  space  and  lifted  masses  of 
ice  out  with  tongs,  and  laid  down  a  path  of  scantlings  from 
the  bank. 

Then  he  led  down  a  team  of  oxen  with  a  drag  chain  and 
fastened  to  it  ice  hooks  whose  jaws  he  set  in  the  edges  of  the 
floe  inclosing  Clelia.  Then  with  cries  of  "  Gee !"  and  "Haw!" 
and  blows  he  sent  the  oxen  forward  and  the  block  came 
lurching  and  splashing  forth,  shining  like  a  diamond  of 
fabulous  size,  like  a  great  gem  in  whose  heart  a  girl  had 
been  enambered. 

Larrick  and  the  chauffeur  kept  lifting  the  timbers  after 
the  block  had  slid  beyond  them  and  running  ahead  of  the 
oxen  to  lay  them  down  again  as  a  runway. 

And  so  Clelia  reached  the  Big  House  at  last.  And  then 
there  was  a  new  problem. 

Mrs.  Roantree  ran  to  her,  fell  down  to  her  knees  and 
tried  to  embrace  her,  but  was  frustrated  by  the  jagged 
frame.  She  commanded  that  the  block  be  taken  at  once 
into  the  room  where  the  fire  could  melt  it.  But  Jeffers 


56  BEAUTY 

said  what  the  others  had  not  the  courage  to  put  into 
words. 

"Better  leave  her  there,  ma'am,  till  we  can  get  over  to 
town  and  bring  across  a  proper  casket  for  the  pore  little 
lady.  It  would  be  more  advisable." 

And  so  in  her  gruesome  loveliness  Clelia  was  kept  in  exile 
yet  awhile. 

With  huge  effort  the  block  was  lifted  and  stood  upright 
against  an  outer  wall  of  the  porch  to  wait  till  the  chauffeur 
and  Jeffers  could  hitch  a  team  of  horses  to  a  sleigh  and  try 
to  break  through  the  wilderness  of  snow.  Mrs.  Roantree 
gave  them  telegrams  to  send,  breaking  to  Clelia's  mother 
and  father  the  fearful  truth. 

When  they  had  set  out,  Mrs.  Roantree  and  Nancy  and 
Berthe  and  the  three  men  stood  gazing  at  Clelia,  like  beggars 
before  a  window  of  deep  glass. 

She  seemed  now  an  angel  afloat  in  the  air,  a  virgin  lifted 
upon  unseen  wings  toward  an  immaculate  conception,  meek 
in  her  glory,  her  hands  praying. 

Mrs.  Roantree  and  the  others  were  silent  a  long  while, 
wondering.  Then  Mrs.  Roantree's  eyes  caught  the  wound 
in  the  brow  and  she  began  to  call  for  vengeance.  She  began 
to  name  names — Coykendall,  Frewin;  she  mentioned  a 
woman  or  two,  and  in  her  insanity  of  suspicion  turned  her 
eyes  even  upon  Nancy  Fleet. 


CHAPTER  XII 

EVERY  suspicion  seemed  to  annul  itself  by  its  own 
implausibility.  The  whole  thought  of  murder  seemed 
ridiculous.  Murder  itself  is  hardly  believable  in  spite  of  its 
innumerable  frequency  in  history  and  in  the  daily  histories. 

Only  recently  in  New  York  a  girl  had  been  found  guilty 
of  killing  her  own  sister;  a  clergyman  had  been  tried  in  the 
mid-West  for  butchering  a  whole  family.  Boys  and  girls 
younger  than  Clelia  had  committed  frightful  crimes.  A 
few  years  before,  a  woman  and  her  craven  lover  had  per- 
suaded her  powerful  husband  to  let  himself  be  bound  as  a 
joke.  Then  the  paramours  had  added  assassination  to  their 
guilt.  In  American  cities,  villages,  and  countrysides  murder 
was  more  commonplace  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 
Four  years  of  war  had  developed  slaughter  into  a  matter 
of  emulation  among  professors  of  chemistry  and  a  dream 
of  shy  inventors.  Yet  in  spite  of  its  unequaled  familiarity 
it  seemed  impossible  that  it  should  have  happened  here. 

No  other  explanation  was  so  clear,  however,  and  a  blank 
indictment  against  some  culprit  must  stand  until  some 
other  explanation  could  be  found  of  Clelia 's  fate. 

Mrs.  Roantree's  theory  was  dreadfully  simple. 

"Somebody  struck  the  poor  child  down  with  a  weapon — 
in  her  room,  perhaps — or  after  he  called  her  out  somehow. 
Then  he  flung  her  sweet  body  in  the  lake  and  ran  away.  It 
might  have  been  some  stranger.  It  might  have  been  one  of 
the  men — or  women — who  left  the  house  yesterday  morning." 

There  was  a  frightening  directness  about  the  charge.  It 
was  almost  convincing,  but  not  quite.  Yet  it  challenged 
a  better  theory.  And  nobody  had  one. 

Randel  ventured  to  say,  "Of  course  she  might  have  flung 
herself  in  the  lake." 

Mrs.  Roantree  and  the  others  met  this  with  exclamations 


S8  BEAUTY 

of  such  protest,  such  fierce  Whys,  that  he  tried  to  justify 
his  guess.  He  moved  to  the  bookshelves  and  Larrick  ex- 
pected him  to  select  the  volume  of  Pepys  in  which  he  had 
found  a  story  of  suicide.  But  he  went  to  a  row  of  Russian 
novels  and  took  one  up,  saying: 

"I've  been  devouring  Dostoievski  recently  and  in  The 
Brothers  Karamzov  I  ran  across  a  reference  to  a  girl  who" — 
he  found  the  place  and  read — "'who  after  some  years  of  an 
enigmatic  passion  for  a  gentleman,  whom  she  might  quite 
easily  have  married  at  any  moment,  invented  impenetrable 
obstacles  to  their  union,  and  ended  by  throwing  herself 
one  stormy  night  into  a  rather  deep  and  rapid  river  from 
a  high  bank,  almost  a  precipice,  and  so  perished,  entirely 
to  satisfy  her  own  caprice  and  to  be  like  Shakespeare's 
Ophelia.'" 

But  this  tragic  affectation,  this  pitiful  effort  at  being 
dramatic  and  classic  at  any  cost,  was  so  alien  to  every  trait 
of  Clelia's  that  Randel  himself  shook  his  head  as  he  closed 
the  book. 

Clelia  could  not  have  tossed  away  her  life  and  her 
rapture  in  it  with  the  careless  gesture  of  one  spilling 
dice.  Her  life  must  have  been  wrested  from  her  against 
her  will  and  wish. 

With  such  a  case  before  the  court,  there  seemed  to  be 
accusation  in  the  very  air.  Everyone  searched  his  mind  for 
an  alibi  and  wondered  what  explanations  the  others  had. 

Merely  to  say,  "I  was  in  bed,  asleep,"  seemed  not  to  be 
enough. 

Nancy  Fleet,  having  been  seared  already  by  one  of  the 
glances  from  Mrs.  Roantree's  fierce  eyes,  said: 

"Oughtn't  we  to  look  in  Clelia's  room  for  signs  of  a 
struggle  or  some  clew  or  something?" 

Mrs.  Roantree  nodded  and  led  the  way.  She  opened  the 
door  upon  a  deathly  chill.  The  little  Empress  bounded 
into  the  room,  whimpering  and  searching  in  vain  for  her 
goddess. 

Berthe  had  dismantled  the  bed  while  she  waited  for  her 
young  mistress,  but  the  pretty  clothes  were  still  waiting  in 
their  bright  colors,  their  dulcet  textures. 


THE   EPILOGUE  59 

The  Empress  leaped  to  ensconce  herself  in  them  and 
purred  loudly.  The  little  comforts  of  life — ribbons  and 
laces  and  the  devotion  of  dogs — make  death  more  pitiful 
than  all  the  somber  grandeurs. 

Mrs.  Roantree  turned  and  ran  from  the  room.  The 
others  tiptoed  about  half-heartedly,  seeking  some  clew.  But 
there  was  proof  enough  that  there  had  been  no  struggle  here. 
They  felt  their  unskillfulness  as  detectives  and  gave  up  the 
pretense. 

Nancy  Fleet  gathered  the  Empress  up  to  her  breast  and 
carried  her  away  in  spite  of  her  struggles.  Larrick  closed 
the  door  and  hurried  back  to  see  if  Clelia  were  still  where 
he  had  left  her. 

Burnley  and  Randel  peered  through  the  window  that  gave 
on  the  porch  and  commanded  a  view  of  the  block  of  ice. 

Miss  Fleet  tapped  on  the  glass  and  beckoned  Larrick 
within 

"You  mustn't  stay  out  there  and  kill  yourself,"  she 
pleaded. 

"She's  out  there,"  Larrick  groaned,  and  turned  aside  to 
conceal  the  rush  of  tears  to  his  eyelids. 

Nancy  Fleet  reached  for  his  hand  and  squeezed  it  hard. 
And  she  walked  away  to  spare  him  and  to  hide  the  tears 
that  welled  to  her  lashes — for  his  sake. 

Larrick  regained  his  self-control  and  went  to  the  window 
where  Randel  and  Burnley  stood.  They  were  both  artists, 
and  their  sorrow  was  turned  to  wonder  by  their  response  to 
the  strange  exquisiteness  of  the  sculptural  masterpiece  of 
death  and  winter. 

Randel  was  reminded  of  one  of  Martial's  epigrams  that 
he  had  translated  in  his  college  days.  It  concerned  a  tiny 
ant  caught  in  a  drop  of  amber  and  made  precious  by  its 
very  death.  Randel  reverently  admired  the  grace  of  the 
girl,  and  the  eloquent  rhythms  of  the  many-wrinkled  silk, 
sculptured  with  minute  complexity  and  superhuman  delicacy. 

He  could  reproduce  some  of  these  graces  and  his  mind  was 
meditating  Clelia  as  a  monument,  but  he  knew  no  way  to 
copy  the  enveloping  ice  that  gave  the  statue  an  aureole  of 
splintered  lights  in  slanting  shafts  and  prismic  radiances. 

5 


60  BEAUTY 

The  color  entranced  him,  too,  for  the  silk  was  of  an 
old-ivory-hue  tint,  and  the  flesh  pale,  but  not  white. 

He  murmured  this  thought  to  Burnley. 

"If  I  could  perpetuate  that  vision  it  would  be  something 
worth  while,  wouldn't  it?" 

"If  you  could!"  sighed  Burnley. 


CHAPTER  XHI 

'"THEY  did  not  know  that  Larrick  had  overheard.  He 
1  had  none  of  the  expressive  arts,  but  only  the  dumb 
longing  of  the  layman.  He  had  been  agonizing  in  his  still 
heart  at  the  thought  of  the  passing  away  of  this  Clelia  before 
his  eyes.  The  ice  would  melt,  her  body  would  be  closed  up 
in  a  case  or  given  to  the  furnace  to  turn  to  ashes,  and  the 
world  would  never  know  her  as  she  was.  This  annihilation 
was  too  wanton  for  him  to  bear,  and,  hearing  the  artists 
musing  aloud,  he  was  moved  to  put  them  to  the  task  of 
defeating  death  in  their  own  way. 

"You  two  men  are  going  to  save  something  from  all  this, 
I  hope?  You  weren't  thinking  of  standing  here  idle  and 
letting  a  beauty  like  that  perish  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
were  you?" 

They  smiled  at  him  indulgently  and  with  gestures  implied 
their  incompetence  to  the  opportunity. 

But  Larrick's  face  turned  grim  as  he  said:  "Seems  to  me 
you  owe  it  to  her,  not  to  say  the  world.  You  both  said  some 
mighty  unkind  things  about  Miss  Clelia  while  she  was 
out  there,  and  I  should  think  you'd  feel  it  a  sort  of  a  duty 
to  do  her  what  justice  you  could." 

"I  might  make  a  sketch,"  Burnley  said. 

Randel  mumbled,  "And  I  might — "  He  did  not  finish, 
but  he  fell  into  deep  thought,  and  walked  away  to  debate 
with  himself  an  idea  of  strange  audacity  whose  rewards 
might  atone  for  its  impiety. 

Randel  was  afraid  that  his  own  years  were  not  many 
before  him,  and  his  terrifying  project  teased  him  as  a  way  to 
render  both  Clelia  and  himself  immortal.  But  he  dared  not 
broach  it  to  a  soul,  hardly  dared  to  debate  it  with  himself. 

Burnley,  however,  sought  his  painting  material  and, 
placing  a  blank  canvas  by  the  window,  began  to  ply  his 


62  BEAUTY 

brushes.  He  was  a  realist,  and  he  did  not  dramatize  or 
allegorize  what  he  saw.  It  was  much  and  enough  if  he 
could  translate  with  his  brushes  what  his  eyes  beheld.  He 
beheld  a  beautiful,  beautiful  girl  in  a  crystal  casket.  As  his 
brushes  ran  from  palette  to  canvas  the  lights  in  the  sky  shifted 
swiftly  and  sunset  scarlets  incarnadined  the  snowy  back- 
ground and  glinted  in  the  ice. 

Early  twilight  ended  his  sketch  before  it  was  more  than 
a  memorandum  for  later  development. 

Randel  had  disappeared,  and  when  he  came  back  he  would 
tell  no  one  where  he  had  been.  But  his  great  resolve  was 
made. 

It  became  evident  that  Jeffers  would  not  return  from  the 
village  by  night.  He  had  said  that  he  would  probably  have 
to  wait  for  the  morning  light  to  get  through. 

A  hush  and  a  fatigue  of  grief  weighed  the  mourners  down, 
and  they  went  to  sleep.  Larrick  had  volunteered  to  keep 
the  vigil  over  Clelia  that  custom  required. 

He  placed  himself  a  chair  by  the  window  and  became  her 
sentinel.  The  twilight  swathed  her  away  from  his  sight 
for  a  while,  save  for  a  dim  and  haunting  glamour  in  the  ice. 
But  by  and  by  the  moon  overtopped  the  mountains  and 
flooded  the  world  with  blue  fire,  turning  the  ice  to  a  mass  of 
tremulous  sheen  as  if  the  ice  were  water  again,  twinkling, 
and  coruscant. 

It  had  an  hypnotic  effect  and  he  had  to  fight  off  a  drowsi- 
ness that  seemed  heartless  but  would  not  be  resisted. 

Whether  it  was  that  he  only  remembered,  or  that  he 
dreamed  it,  with  the  baffling  velocity  and  detail  of  recollec- 
tion or  of  dream  experience,  in  that  night  he  went  vividly 
over  all  his  life  from  the  curious  events  that  had  sent  him 
out  of  the  so  different  world  of  his  youth  into  the  alien 
planet  of  Clelia  and  her  people. 

He  retraced  everything,  and  marveled  at  the  little  acci- 
dents and  impulses  that  had  built  his  destiny  to  this  tragedy. 
Intolerable  as  it  was,  it  was  precious;  and  he  would  not  have 
been  absent  from  it  for  any  other  ecstasy  that  might  have 
been  his,  if  any  of  the  infinitesimal  influences  conveying 
him  hither  had  shunted  him  along  any  other  path. 


THE   EPILOGUE  63 

An  infinity  of  other  fates  might  have  been  his,  but  this 
was  the  one  that  befell  him,  and  he  was  broken-heartedly 
glad  of  it  and  utterly  determined  to  see  it  through. 

And  so,  while  the  household  lay  in  the  stupor  of  slumber, 
he  was  more  than  awake,  so  busily  adream,  indeed,  that  his 
life  ran  before  him  in  review.  By  a  familiar  miracle  of 
memory  he  turned  time  back  and  let  it  repeat  itself.  He 
saw  himself  from  a  distance  as  if  his  disembodied  soul 
hovered  in  the  clouds  and  watched  his  body  wandering 
the  paths  whose  conclusions  it  could  not  foresee,  though 
they  were  all  too  plain  to  him  now.  Here  he  saw  purpose 
where  there  had  been  none,  and  he  found  a  mystic  intention 
in  results  that  were  but  the  algebraic  total  of  accidents. 

And  while  he  scanned  his  life,  as  it  rolled  past  his  eyes, 
he  kept  searching  for  some  hint  that  might  set  him  on  the 
track  of  the  fiend  who  had  turned  the  livingest  creature 
he  had  ever  known  into  that  figure  so  incredibly  still  in  the 
ceaseless  shimmer  of  the  moonlit  ice. 

His  shattered  hopes  were  but  one  hope — the  solving  of 
the  riddle  of  that  wound  in  Clelia's  brow.  He  was  warned 
by  one  fierce  ambition  to  "get"  the  man. 

He  had  in  his  day  trailed  murderers  and  cattle  thieves  and 
Mexican  bandits  and  had  learned  the  art  of  the  scout,  the 
relentlessness  of  the  hound  on  the  scent. 

He  stirred  in  his  chair  and  clenched  his  fist,  his  jaws, 
and  even  his  throat  as  he  groaned:  "I'll  get  him!  By  God! 
I'll  get  him  good  and  plenty — the  rattlesnake!" 


Book  II 
THE  PROLOGUE 


CHAPTER  I 

'""PHE  rattlesnake!"  was  a    compellation   that   Larrick 

1  repented  instantly.  He  had  dwelt  and  moved  among 
venomous  reptiles  so  long  that  the  word  sprang  to  his 
thought  from  old  custom.  For  years  it  had  been  his  habit 
to  shake  his  shoes  before  he  put  them  on,  lest  a  tarantula 
or  a  centipede  had  taken  possession  there,  to  go  through  his 
shirts  and  breeches  for  scorpions,  to  move  warily  and  keep 
on  the  eternal  lookout  for  Gila  monsters  and  various  sorts  of 
rattlesnake. 

At  one  of  his  first  teas  in  New  York,  when  his  hostess  had 
sounded  an  electric  buzzer  Larrick  threw  his  cup  into  the 
air  as  he  leaped  to  his  feet.  The  tinny  whir  had  reminded 
his  muscles  of  a  rattlesnake,  and  they  had  thrown  him  on 
guard  before  his  mind  could  remember  where  he  was. 

He  smiled  sorrowfully  now  to  recall  how  fascinated 
Clelia  had  been  when  he  told  her  once: 

"  My  best  friend  was  a  rattlesnake.  If  it  hadn't  been  for 
a  rattler  I'd  never  have  known  you." 

It  was  a  rattlesnake  that  brought  him  to  this  remark 
and  he  marveled  to  think  that  he  should  have  heard  one 
in  her  company  and  in  the  depths  of  the  most  expensive 
luxury. 

For  the  recapture  of  the  Adirondacks  from  the  lumber 
vandals  and  the  hunters  was  a  most  expensive  luxury,  and, 
strangely,  the  turning  of  a  mountain  range  into  a  vast  public 
park  surrounded  by  private  parks  and  the  protection  of  the 
zone  from  fires  and  marauders  has  had  the  ironical  conse- 
quence that  the  poisonous  serpent  is  being  welcomed  back 
into  the  restored  Edens;  the  bear  is  seen  once  more,  wolves 
are  heard,  and  the  deer  tear  up  the  golf  links  and  startle 
the  automobilist  as  far  south  as  Westchester. 

It  was  at  Mrs.  Roantree's  camp  that  Larrick  encountered 


68  BEAUTY 

his  first  Northern  rattler.  The  word  "camp"  had  amused 
him  as  much  as  the  "mountains."  "Camp"  and  "moun- 
tains" had  meant  to  him  either  the  military  tent  colony  or 
the  lone  bivouac  of  the  cowboy  in  the  parched  and  grassless 
wastes  of  the  tortured  Texan  desert. 

But  here  everything  was  velvet,  the  camp  was  palatial, 
and  the  mountains  suave  and  serene.  In  his  eyes  the 
Adirondacks  were  upholstered  in  green  plush. 

Soon  after  his  arrival  Clelia  had  taken  him  out  for  a 
clamber.  He  had  rejoiced  in  her  prowess  and  her  grace. 
There  was  something  of  the  young  panther  in  her  combina- 
tion of  fierce  energy  with  fine  raiment. 

Suddenly  she  stopped  short  and  fell  back  plump  into  his 
arms. 

It  was  the  first  time  he  had  found  her  there,  except  in  a 
dance.  He  would  never  have  dared  to  gather  her  in, 
though  he  had  ventured  an  audacity  with  Nancy  Fleet  at 
the  first  opportunity. 

Clelia  nestled  close  to  Larrick  and  shivered  with  violence. 
She  even  drew  his  arms  about  her  and  made  no  secret  of  her 
terror.  It  was  the  first  time  he  had  seen  her  reveal  fear. 
He  excused  her  because  his  own  hair  had  risen  along  the  back 
of  his  neck.  They  were  scrambling  across  a  shelf  of  rock 
when  they  heard  a  clatter  like  the  escape  of  the  mainspring 
of  a  clock.  Both  of  them  knew  that  a  rattlesnake  was  close 
at  foot. 

Both  of  them  stood  stock-still  till  the  alarm  died  out.  At 
the  first  movement  it  shrilled  again. 

Larrick  held  Clelia  fast  while  he  searched  the  ledge  with 
keen  eyes.  At  last  he  made  out  the  timber  monster.  He 
had  just  shed  his  banded  skin  and  he  was  black  as  patent 
leather.  He  lay  coiled  for  his  thrust,  his  erect  tail  shudder- 
ing, his  odious  clubbed  head  retracted  on  an  S  loop,  his 
sharp  syringes  of  venom  poised. 

But  he  made  no  advance  and  asked  merely  to  be  let  alone. 
The  implacable  pacifists  who  insist  that  preparedness  means 
aggression  are  contradicted  by  the  habit  of  the  best-armed 
and  the  readiest  of  our  American  animals,  who  never  advances 
beyond  his  own  territory  for  a  fight. 


THE    PROLOGUE  69 

"Kill  him!"  Clelia  whispered,  and  Larrick,  drawing  her 
back  to  safety,  cast  about  for  a  club  of  proper  heft.  The 
rattler,  having  satisfied  his  dignity,  was  for  moving  quietly 
away.  He  had  only  a  few  days  more  of  sunlight  before  his 
withdrawal  into  the  seams  of  the  mountain  for  his  winter 
sleep. 

As  Larrick  advanced,  the  snake  returned  to  his  coil  and 
repeated  his  "Noli  me  tangere!" 

Larrick  rejoiced  at  the  prospect  of  battle,  but  paused  to 
say: 

"Dog-on  it,  Miss  Clelia,  it  don't  seem  right  to  me  to 
kill  a  rattler.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  a  rattler  I'd  never  have 
come  up  North.  I'd  never  have  struck  it  rich.  I'd  never 
have  met  up  with  you.  Seems  like  I  owe  everything  worth 
while  in  my  life  to  a  rattlesnake — not  forgetting  a  bear  and 
a  pair  of  mules  and  a  cayuse  that  throwed  me." 

Clelia  was  woman  enough  to  love  a  story  that  she 
hated,  and  she  demanded  the  answer  to  Larrick's  riddle- 
some  poser. 

She  chose  a  safe  resting  place  in  the  embrasure  of  a  great 
tree's  roots  on  the  brink  of  a  tumultuous  brook  and  ordered 
him  to  begin. 

She  had  always  treated  him  as  a  sort  of  living  story  book, 
a  collection  of  quaint  adventures  told  in  a  dialect  of  captivat- 
ing uncouthness.  He  fascinated  her  by  his  difference;  as 
Othello,  Desdemona.  Larrick  was  almost  as  swart  as  the 
Moor,  but  Clelia  had  none  of  the  look  of  Desdemona  where 
she  perched  in  her  boyish  costume,  cross-legged  and  impudent 
as  she  rolled  herself  a  cigarette. 

She  was  as  curious  to  Larrick  as  he  to  her;  her  dialect  as 
quaint  and  her  adventures  as  astonishing. 

On  that  day  he  had  blessed  the  rattlesnake  that  brought 
him  all  his  good  fortune.  On  this  later  night  he  felt  that 
he  had  spoken  his  gratitude  too  soon.  His  happiness  had 
only  been  an  exaltation  to  prepare  for  a  more  disastrous 
fall.  He  felt  that  it  would  have  been  a  greater  happiness 
to  him  if  the  serpent  had  filled  his  veins  with  its  poison  and 
saved  him  from  the  baser  treachery  of  fate  and  the  bitterer 
anguish. 


70  BEAUTY 

But  now  he  recalled  the  bright  eyes,  the  eager  attention,  the 
impertinent  comments  of  Clelia,  as  he  told  her  how  he  that 
had  been  the  poorest  of  men  became  almost  instantly  a  man 
of  wealth.  There  was  a  something  of  the  "Arabian  Nights"  in 
the  miracle,  except  that  it  really  happened.  It  would  have 
been  inexcusably  fantastic  coming  from  any  other  author  except 
the  historian  of  fact. 


CHAPTER  II 

SAVE  himself  in  retrospection,  there  was  no  witness  of 
Larrick's  actions  on  that  fateful  day  a  year  or  so  before, 
when  life,  after  seeming  to  neglect  and  discard  him  utterly, 
caught  him  up  with  a  rush  of  glory. 

Life  found  him  in  the  dismalest  of  regions,  with  no  hope  and 
little  ambition.  His  very  heart  had  been  dried  out  of  him 
in  that  country  where,  as  the  saying  was,  there  was  not 
moisture  enough  to  rust  a  nail.  He  was  stranded  in  one  of 
the  man-forsakenest  and  apparently  God-forsakenest  parts 
of  the  American  wilderness. 

Excepting  a  settlement  or  two  and  a  dozen  tiny  hamlets  and 
one  county  seat  of  fifteen  hundred  souls  strung  along  one 
rope  of  railroad  track  Brewster  County  is  a  blank  on  the  rail- 
road map  of  Texas.  Yet  Massachusetts  or  New  Jersey  with 
their  populations  of  two  and  a  half  or  three  and  a  half 
millions  could  be  laid  down  (if  either  of  them  could  be  picked 
up)  inside  the  borders  of  Brewster.  Its  confines  would 
almost  contain  the  whole  of  Belgium  with  her  seven  and  a 
half  millions. 

Outside  of  the  town  of  Alpine,  Brewster  had  less  than  four 
thousand  people  in  its  domain.  The  loneliness  of  that  realm 
can  be  guessed  if  one  considers  that  Belgium  has  nearly 
seven  hundred  people  to  the  square  mile,  while  Brewster 
County  has  hardly  more  than  half  of  one  person  to  a  square 
mile.  And  two  thirds  of  that  half  is  a  Mexican  who  knows 
the  American  language  just  well  enough  to  answer  a  question 
with,  "No  se  Ingles!"  It  is  desert  waste,  and  chiefly  moun- 
tain desert,  with  the  Comanche  and  the  Santiago  chains 
cutting  across  it  and  a  chaos  of  peaks  to  the  south,  where 
it  ends  in  the  eastern  gut  of  the  Big  Bend  of  the  Rio  Grande 
River. 

These  mountains  are  volcanic  and  sedimentary  and  as 


72  BEAUTY 

ugly,  as  empty  of  majesty,  as  mountains  can  be,  except  for 
an  occasional  benediction  from  a  sunset  or  a  sunrise  or  from 
the  peculiar  poetry  of  desert  twilight,  which  seems  to  change 
the  very  air  to  a  new  and  bewildering  vapor.  The  two  great 
bodies  of  water  refreshing  this  aridity  are  Calamity  Creek 
and  Terlingua  Creek,  and  both  of  them  are  most  of  the  year 
mere  furrows  in  the  sand  and  rock,  so  dry  that  a  few  hours 
after  some  infrequent  cloudburst  has  shot  them  off  into 
torrents  they  seem  never  to  have  known  a  feeling  of 
dampness. 

It  was  less  strange  that  Larrick  should  be  in  such  a  dreary 
waste  than  that  anyone  at  all  should  be  there.  Humanity 
is  an  animal  of  various  tastes,  and  the  more  inhospitable  the 
region,  the  more  it  challenges  certain  types  of  defiant  man. 

Larrick  was  not  there  from  any  such  heroic  quality. 
He  had  merely  chanced  to  meet  a  rancher  from  that  inferno 
in  the  town  where  he  had  chanced  to  save  Norry  Frewin's 
life  when  Spot  Caper  flourished  his  pistol  at  Frewin  and 
Larrick  insanely,  or  divinely,  chose  to  step  into  his  place 
and  to  press  his  forehead  against  the  muzzle  of  the  drunk- 
ard's gun  and  from  that  coign  of  disadvantage  dared  the 
sot  to  shoot  him. 

The  next  day  after  Larrick  had  shipped  young  Frewin 
home  to  New  York,  on  money  that  Larrick  had  borrowed 
to  lend,  Larrick  was  plunged  into  a  pit  of  despondency. 
Envy  and  disgust  sickened  him. 

Frewin  had  been  born  to  wealth  and  glory.  Frewin  had 
known  New  York  so  well  that  he  had  tired  of  it.  Frewin 
was  going  back  to  the  paradise  he  had  run  away  from. 
But  Larrick  had  never  been  to  paradise.  He  had  never  been 
anywhere  worth  the  trip  except  to  Houston  for  a  time, 
when  he  was  in  the  military  service.  And  even  then  he 
never  got  to  France,  never  got  to  New  York,  never  got  out  of 
Texas.  And  there  was  no  likelihood  of  his  ever  getting  out. 
Young  as  he  was,  he  was  as  doleful  and  felt  as  senile  as  the 
old  man  who  never  had  been  to  Carcassone — of  which  Larrick 
had  never  heard. 

Larrick  was  as  pessimistic  as  a  man  could  be  who  had 
had  so  short  a  life  to  practice  pessimism  in.  And  then 


THE   PROLOGUE  73 

'he  met  up  with  Josh  Milman,  whom  he  had  known  as  a  fellow 
soldier.  Milman  was  looking  for  cow-punchers  for  his 
father's  ranch,  and  he  offered  extra  pay  to  Larrick  to  come 
along. 

The  thing  that  decided  Larrick  was  Milman's  recom- 
mendation: 

"It  is  the  loneliest,  dried-uppatest,  goldamnedest  sink  hole 
that  Gawd  ever  spit  on,  and  nobody  would  live  there  that  was 
fitten  to  live  anywheres  else." 

"That's  the  place  I'm  lookin'  for,"  said  Larrick,  and 
closed  the  deal. 

They  took  train  to  Alpine,  and  from  there  took  horse  and 
rode  nearly  a  hundred  miles  due  south  almost  to  the  Rio 
Grande,  from  whose  ignoble  bed  most  of  the  water  was 
carried  in  wagons  for  twelve  miles  or  so. 

In  that  hell  beneath  hell  water  was  the  everlasting  prob- 
lem. Wells  were  practically  unknown,  and  rain  was  almost 
never  heard.  Big  tanks  were  sunk  in  the  rocky  sections' 
to  catch  and  hold  what  little  fell  from  the  rare  clouds  that 
visited  that  kettle  lid  of  a  sky. 

Here  in  this  peninsula  of  the  United  States,  thrust  into 
the  side  of  Mexico,  and  still  Mexican  in  the  main,  Larrick 
took  up  existence.  He  was  a  kind  of  savage  vegetation,  a 
sort  of  roving  cactus  or  Spanish  bayonet,  getting  along  some- 
how on  almost  no  water,  and  bristling  at  all  points. 

The  few  whites  who  owned  the  fewer  ranches  preferred 
white  cowboys  to  greasers,  and  the  eternal  race  feud  furnished 
the  chief  excitement.  The  cowboys  carried  "six-guns" 
and  rifles,  and  found  their  own  forage  when  they  rode  herd. 
Here  flourished  in  one  of  its  last  strongholds  the  American 
epic  estate,  established  by  the  old  West  before  the  barbed- 
wire  fence  strangled  it  to  death.  Here  one  might  have  his 
fill  of  that  civilization  so  incessantly  represented  in  the 
moving  pictures  and  so  nearly  extinct  elsewhere. 

The  Mexican  bandits  came  over  the  border  now  and  then 
and  the  wilderness  thereabouts  was  the  haunt  of  desperadoes 
who  were  "wanted"  for  various  reasons. 

Horses  and  men  had  a  hard  life  and  even  mules  were  put 
to  the  test  of  their  mettle.  Larrick  had  grown  morose  and 


74  BEAUTY 

as  dangerous  as  a  rattlesnake.  He  abominated  the  environ- 
ment human  and  natural,  but  he  could  not  muster  the  cour- 
age to  rise  and  move  on  to  pleasanter  pastures.  Then  a 
complex  chain  of  events  in  that  eventless  clime  hoisted 
him  abruptly  out  of  the  dry  well  into  the  blue  sky. 

Oldman  Milman  had  a  sportive  disposition,  and  one  day 
while  he  was  crossing  one  of  those  cast-iron  stoves,  called 
the  Chisos  Mountains,  he  startled  a  black  bear.  The 
bear  waddled  off  about  its  business,  but  Pop  Milman  put 
after  it  with  his  lariat  swirling.  He  settled  the  noose  about 
the  shaggy  neck  and  detained  the  traveler.  Whereupon  the 
bear  turned  and  put  after  Pop  Milman. 

Remembering  how  High-Chin  Bob  in  the  ballad  lassoed 
the  lion  and  was  condemned  to  an  eternal  flight  of  dragging 
the  prey  that  pursued  him,  and  could  neither  be  released 
nor  worn  out,  Pop  Milman  spurred  his  panicky  cayuse 
toward  a  big  tree  that  stuck  out  of  the  rocks  like  a  huge 
mistake.  He  flung  the  rope  over  a  low,  stout  limb,  caught 
it  as  he  rode  on,  and  proceeded  to  lynch  poor  bruin,  fastening 
his  end  of  the  rope  to  a  stump  and  leaving  his  captive  to 
dangle  and  choke. 

The  cayuse  hardly  got  the  old  man  to  the  ranch  house 
before  it  broke  down  in  a  nervous  collapse  that  rendered  it 
a  useless  invalid  for  life. 

Old  Milman  bragged  of  his  feat  to  his  wife  and  promised 
her  the  bear's  pelt  as  a  rug  for  her  sitting  room.  He  invited 
her  to  ride  out  with  him  in  the  buckboard,  which  was  drawn 
by  the  best  two  mules  in  southern  Texas,  and  assist  at  the 
skinning. 

As  soon  as  the  mules  sniffed  the  bear  from  afar  they  whirled 
and  bolted,  throwing  the  two  Milmans  overboard.  Pop 
was  knocked  senseless,  and  when  he  recovered  he  found  that 
his  wife  had  suffered  one  fractured  leg  among  her  many 
injuries.  The  dazed  couple  lay  there  broken  and  broiled 
on  the  skillet  of  the  rocks  until  the  mules,  returning  to  the 
corral  with  the  empty  and  shattered  buckboard,  gave  the 
alarm. 

Larrick  and  young  Josh  Milman  leaped  on  their  horses 
and  flashed  away  to  the  scene  of  the  disaster.  Their  horses 


THE   PROLOGUE  75 

bucked,  snorted,  and  rebelled  as  soon  as  they  reached  the 
aroma  zone  of  the  bear. 

The  young  men  thereupon  dismounted  and  approached  on 
foot.  The  hanging  bear  had  taken  abundant  revenge  for 
the  unwarranted  assault  on  him. 

Larrick  and  Josh  bolstered  the  cracked  and  bleeding  vic- 
tims against  the  hot  rocks  and,  recapturing  their  horses, 
rode  away  again,  Josh  to  fetch  a  wagon  and  Larrick  to  seek 
the  nearest  doctor  to  set  the  old  woman's  shattered  femur. 

This  meant  for  Larrick  a  hundred  and  eighty  miles  of 
travel  to  Alpine  and  back;  but  that  was  better  than  a  lifelong 
limp  for  the  dear  old  lady,  whose  goodliness  preserved 
Larrick 's  respect  for  womankind.  Womankind  thereabouts 
meant  Mexican  women,  mainly  of  the  poorest  and  loosest 
sort.  Their  uncleanliness  was  next  to  their  godliness,  and 
they  had  a  convenient  theory  that  sin  confessed  and  paid 
for  could  be  renewed  indefinitely  on  the  same  terms  without 
immortal  peril. 

Larrick  did  not  tell  Clelia  much  about  these  greasers. 
It  did  not  seem  to  him  the  thing  to  tell  the  "cream  dee  la 
cream"  about  what  he  called  the  "grease  dee  la  grease." 

But  it  had  amazed  him  to  hear  the  metropolitan  moralists 
throwing  all  the  blame  for  girlish  wrong-going  on  the  moving 
pictures,  the  naughty  plays,  and  sex  novels,  the  dances  and 
the  de'collete'  gowns — since  the  wickedest  women  of  Lar- 
rick's  acquaintance  had  never  seen  a  play  or  a  moving  pic- 
ture, could  not  have  read  a  romance  if  they  had  known 
where  to  buy  one,  had  never  been  to  a  dance,  and  paid  little 
heed  to  their  shapeless  but  sufficient  clothes.  Furthermore, 
they  were  intensely  religious  and  they  never  had  heard  of 
divorce,  the  other  scapegoat  of  all  social  disorder. 

Yet  they  had  somehow  learned  to  practice  almost  every 
known  vice  from  blasphemy,  bestiality,  and  incest  up  to 
covetousness  and  false  witness. 

Larrick  thought  of  these  things  often  later,  and  when  he 
came  to  know  the  truth  about  people  of  wealth  and  fashion 
dwelling  in  a  world  of  art  and  beauty  and  cleanliness,  his 
respect  for  the  loud-mouthed  satirists  and  the  pulpit-pounding 
slanderers  was  not  increased. 
6 


rf  BEAUTY 

On  this  ride  he  thought  of  other  things,  never  dreaming  as 
he  rode  that  he  was  riding  straight  out  of  poverty  and  the 
desert  into  the  demesnes  of  all  opulence. 

His  thoughts  were  on  poor  Ma  Milman,  a  stalwart  heroine, 
as  powerful  as  a  man — and  as  gentle  as  a  man — fearless  in  a 
bandit  raid,  tireless  in  making  her  boys  comfortable  and 
feeding  them  well.  She  swore  so  majestically  and  smoked 
such  strong  tobacco  that  when  Larrick  came  to  hear  a  lady 
utter  a  damnlet  or  see  her  puff  a  dainty  cigarette  he  was  not 
so  horrified  as  he  might  have  been.  The  woman  who  had 
been  to  him  what  his  mother  would  have  been  if  she  had 
lived  wore  breeches,  cursed,  drank,  smoked,  and  had  not 
been  near  enough  to  a  church  to  go  to  one  for  twenty  years. 
There  was  a  tradition  that  Ma  Milman  had  been  known  to 
chaw  terbacker  when  the  smokes  were  short,  but  Larrick 
could  not  verify  this. 

It  only  bewildered  him  to  find  people  who  seemed  to 
think  that  such  things  had  some  vital  connection  with 
virtue;  that  not  to  do  these  things  was  to  accomplish  a  great 
and  noble  life,  and  that  heaven  was  an  exclusive  club  whose 
members  had  never  played  cards,  danced,  dressed  up,  seen 
a  play,  a  movie,  read  a  love  story,  revealed  more  than  a 
minimum  of  skin,  quaffed  a  liquor,  or  set  a  tobacco  roll  on 
fire — or  who,  if  they  had  done  any  of  these  things,  had  put 
themselves  in  a  brief  Hades  of  repentance  and  burned  out 
the  carbon  in  their  cylinders. 

According  to  certain  people  whose  diatribes  Larrick  read 
and  heard,  the  angels  of  heaven  spent  most  of  their  time 
snooping,  eavesdropping,  and  keyholing,  and  recording  the 
very  thoughts  and  whims  that  drifted  through  the  souls 
of  the  candidates  for  heaven.  They  blackballed  all  of  the 
candidates  who  were  not  lily-white  or  covered  with  ashes  of 
regret.  And  there  was  only  one  other  club  (or  at  the  most 
two)  to  belong  to — the  largest  and  most  liberal  of  them  all 
being  hell  with  an  eternal  membership  and  a  grillroom 
even  worse  than  Brewster  County  at  its  worst. 

But  these  psychologies  were  for  the  after-life  that  Larrick 
was  riding  toward  unwittingly.  His  resolve  now  was  to  get 
to  the  nearest  ranch  and  borrow  a  flivver  that  he  might 


THE   PROLOGUE  77 

make  the  rest  of  the  way  to  Alpine  at  a  higher  speed  than 
his  broncho  could  maintain. 

He  was  remembering  old  Milman's  words,  "If  that 
damned  doctor  don't  want  to  come,  fetch  him,  the  way  I 
done  fotch  the  b'ar." 

Larrick  was  riding  over  pathless  territory,  making  a  short 
cut  from  the  scene  of  the  accident  to  the  road  north.  The 
quick,  almost  snaky  motion  of  his  horse  swung  him  into  a 
mood  for  song,  and  he  howled  melancholiac  strains  that 
must  have  discouraged  the  coyotes. 

The  horse  swerved  from  a  short,  green  rattlesnake,  twisted 
through  endless  clumps  of  cactus,  slashed  through  mesquite, 
gave  the  bayonet  plant  a  wide  berth,  and  kept  his  wits  swift 
and  sure. 

The  sun  poured  down  the  only  rain  there  had  been  for 
months,  and  it  was  almost  audible  as  it  beat  on  Larrick's 
broad  hat  brim,  shimmered  on  the  rattlesnake  skin  that 
served  for  a  hat  band,  and  fried  the  horse's  back. 

Coming  to  a  tiny  pool  of  sweet  water  somehow  mislaid 
in  that  place,  Larrick  dismounted  and  squatted  at  the 
brink,  taking  his  hat  by  the  crown  and  using,  the  brim  for  a 
saucer  to  drink  from.  The  cayuse  at  his  side  gulped  with 
ill-mannered  noise. 

Then  they  swung  away  again.  Larrick  sang  what  he 
could  remember  from  the  "  Dance  at  the  Ranch  "  and  grinned 
to  recall  some  of  the  plump  "sage  hens "  he  had  romped  with. 
Anyjvillage  big  enough  for  a  dance  seemed  like  a  metropolis 
to  him  now,  and  he  grew  a  trifle  lonely  for  a  less  lonely 
existence. 

His  heart  was  unconsciously  hungering  for  a  love  affair 
with  somebody — almost  anybody  who  was  not  a  Mex. 
He  was  tempted  to  linger  in  Alpine  for  a  day  on  some  excuse, 
sending^  the  doctor  back  without  him.  It  would  not  be 
quite  white,  but  he  was  "  lonedsome,  Gawd-awful  lonedsome." 

He  had  had  what  he  grandiosely  called  a  "superfluous 
sufficiency"  of  the  desert.  The  scorching  wind  with  its 
meanness,  aggravated  by  an  eternal  little  blizzard  of  sharp 
sand,  was  ripping  old  bunches  of  sagebrush  from  their  dry 
roots  and  sending  them  rolling  and  jouncing  across  the  hate- 


78  BEAUTY 

ful  scene.  Everywhere  there  were  trees  blown  into  postures 
of  crippled  agony  and  everywhere  tumbling  clumps  of  sage- 
brush scuttering  and  driven  like  frightened  rabbits.  His  own 
life  was  as  aimless,  yet  as  driven,  as  that  of  any  dead  sage- 
brush. 

There  was  nothing  but  melancholy  in  the  heavens,  the  air, 
the  earth,  and  the  products  of  the  earth.  It  was  all  misery 
and  caricature. 

He  ought  to  settle  down  in  a  town  somewhere,  be  a 
blacksmith  or  a  clerk  in  a  grocery  store,  eat  in  a  nice  boarding 
house,  and  have  a  girl  to  call  on.  As  the  Oriental  poet, 
Sheerkohf,  put  it,  "Song  is  the  dew  of  heaven  on  the  bosom 
of  the  desert;  it  cools  the  path  of  the  traveler."  So  Larrick 
fell  to  singing  of  the  houri  of  Occidental  poesy : 

'\Biscuit-shootin'  Susie 

She's  got  us  roped  and  tied. 
Sober  men  or  woozy 

Look  on  her  with  pride. 
Susie's  strong  and  able, 

And  not  a  one  gits  rash 
When  she  waits  on  the  table 

And  superintends  the  hash." 

He  was  reveling  in  a  dream  of  fair  women — railroad  lunch- 
counter  waitresses  who  had  waited  on  him.  How  he  would 
love  to  wait  on  one !  His  ambitions  did  not  climb  so  high  as 
the  grace  of  some  of  the  ladies  who  had  fed  the  soldiers,  met 
them  at  the  stations  with  sandwiches  and  coffee,  or  passed 
them  dainties  at  the  canteens. 

One  of  the  beauties  of  the  Fred  Harvey  system  would 
be  queen  enough  for  Larrick.  He  was  so  nympholept  that  he 
began  to  compose  a  song  of  his  own — the  next  step  would  be 
sunstroke.  As  he  worked  it  out  it  ran  something  like  this : 

"  There's  a  little  girl  in  Alpine 
And  I'm  goin'  to  spark  her  sometime. 
She's  the  belle  of  Brewster 
And  I'll  be  a  lucky  rooster 
If  she'll  be  mine  alone 
And  make  with  me  her  home." 


THE   PROLOGUE  79 

Larrick  rather  liked  this.  It  was  the  makin's  of  a  classic 
— a  classic  being  anything  that  was  not  intentionally  a 
comic. 

He  cantered  into  the  second  stanza. 

"  Oh,  little  Alpine  lady, 
Wilst  thou  be  mine — oh,  maybe — " 

His  afflation  was  interrupted  as  his  frenzed  rolling  eye 
caught  a  glimpse  of  a  huge  diamond  rattler  just  ahead, 
moving  straight  and  slow  toward  some  prey.  Its  color  and 
its  scales  were  so  close  akin  to  the  color  and  texture  of  the 
dead  gray  sand  in  the  dry  creek  the  broncho  was  dipping 
across  that  Larrick  might  not  have  seen  it  if  it  had  not 
moved. 

But  it  had  to  move.  It  was  nearly  seven  feet  long,  and 
as  it  heard  him  it  whipped  itself  into  a  coil,  drew  in  the 
great  breath  that  swelled  it  fat,  and  set  off  its  clattering 
alarm,  proffering  the  ugliest  cup  of  poison  that  could  sicken 
the  human  heart. 

Before  Larrick's  mind  could  meditate  the  situation  his 
right  hand  had  snatched  out  his  pistol,  aimed  it,  and  fired  it. 
The  snake  did  most  of  the  aiming,  sending  its  fang-pronged 
lance  head  straight  at  the  pistol's  one  eye,  and  meeting  the 
bullet  halfway. 

The  bullet  nipped  off  the  head,  which  glanced  harmlessly 
from  Larrick's  box  stirrup,  spurting  its  venom  as  its  fangs 
smote. 

Larrick's  horse  had  also  coiled  for  a  spring  out  of  the  ser- 
pent's reach.  The  odor  of  the  bear  had  made  it  hysterical 
beyond  its  wont,  and  now  it  had  not  expected  the  report  of 
the  pistol.  So  it  went  through  the  air  in  the  slanting  hurtle 
of  a  hooked  tarpon. 

Larrick  did  not  go  with  it.    In  the  words  of  the  bard: 

"  Though  it's  nothin'  they  take  pride  in, 

Still  most  fellers  I  have  knowed, 
If  they  ever  done  much  ridin' 
Has  at  different  times  got  throwed." 


8o  BEAUTY 

This  was  one  of  the  times  when  Larrick  did  the  "hoochy- 
koochy  dance,  moppin'  up  the  canon's  surface  with  the 
bosom  of  his  pants." 

He  came  down  in  a  nest  of  cactus  in  whose  shade  a 
pair  of  amorous  horned  rattlesnakes  had  taken  refuge 
from  observation.  They  left  immediately  in  the  grotesque 
bias  loops  that  have  given  them  the  name  of  "side- 
winder." They  resembled  pieces  of  agitated  lariat  mining 
away. 

Larrick  grinned  at  them  in  spite  of  his  pained  amazement. 
He  lifted  himself  from  the  cactus  bed  with  many  an  oath, 
the  spines  plunging  into  him  wherever  he  rested  an  elbow  or 
a  hand  to  pry  himself  free. 

As  he  told  Clelia  afterward:  "I  was  as  full  of  pins  as  a 
new-boughten  shirt.  When  I  stood  up  I  felt  something 
knock  my  foot.  It  was  that  fool  rattlesnake  tryin'  to  bite 
me  without  any  head  on  to  it  to  bite  with. 

"A  little  ways  off  the  head  was  nippin'  at  a  rock,  forgettin' 
it  hadn't  any  body  on  to  it.  I  noticed  the  piece  of  black 
rock  the  snake  was  wastin'  its  time  over.  There  was  a  lot 
of  red  about  it. 

"At  first  I  thought  it  was  blood.  I  looked  again,  and,  lo 
and  beholes!  it  was  cinnabar." 

He  looked  at  Clelia  with  dramatic  effect,  as  a  child  does 
who  finally  springs  the  great  word  of  a  long  story. 

Clelia's  face  was  a  blank  of  polite  suspense,  waiting  for  the 
point.  He  repeated  the  tremendous  name: 

"I  say,  it  was  cinnabar." 

"Yes.  And  then?"  said  Clelia.  "You  know,  cinnabar 
means  nothing  in  my  fair  young  life.  What  is  it?  Any 
relation  to  the  cinnamon  b'ar  that  your  old  Pop  Milton 
lynched?" 

Larrick  was  disgusted.  He  had  led  up  to  his  grand  climax 
with  the  utmost  ingenuity  and  it  was  a  hopeless  fizzle.  He 
took  a  cinch  in  his  self-control  and  with  violent  patience 
explained : 

"Cinnabar  is  what  mercury  comes  in.  It's  the  ore  of 
mercury.  Simply  full  of  it . " 


8i 

"I  see.  Like  a  thermometer,"  Clelia  conceded,  and 
added,  "Go  on,  strahnger,  your  story  interests  me." 

"Well,  that's  my  story!"  Larrick  groaned,  surrendering. 

" Oh ! "  sighed  Clelia.     "Most  exciting ! " 

"Don't  you  see?"  Larrick  pleaded.  "Of  course  you 
don't,  but  it's  like  this.  I  was  riding  over  one  of  the  branches 
of  the  Terlingua  Creek,  and  Terlingua  is  where  the  quick- 
silver mines  are.  Everybody  in  Brewster  County  knows 
cinnabar  when  he  sees  it,  and  I'd  found  a  pocket  of  it. 

"  If  I  could  prove  it  was  on  land  that  hadn't  been  claimed 
by  anybody,  I  could  record  it  in  my  name  and  work  it  or  sell 
it.  Well,  it  hadn't  been,  and  I  did,  and  I  got  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  it;  sold  out  to  a  syndicate 
that  everybody  says  is  owned  by  the  Rothschilds." 

"Oh,  now  you  speak  a  language  I  can  understand,"  said 
Clelia.  "I'm  pleased  to  meet  you,  Mr.  Cinnabar.  So 
that's  how  you  became  a  millionaire."  / 

"Well,  I'm  only  a  quarter  of  one — or  I  was.  But  it 
was  some  jump,  at  that,  from  bein'  a  cow-puncher  on  next 
to  nothin'  a  year  and  no  prospects.  And  I  owe  it  all  to  that 
poor  diamond-back." 

"And  to  several  other  animals,"  said  Clelia.  "If  that 
bear  hadn't  come  out  of  that  mountain  just  at  the  moment 
that  Pa  Millington  rode  by.  And  if  he  hadn't  been  cruel 
enough — " 

"Oh,  don't  say  anything  against  Pop  Milman." 

"Well,  then  if  he  hadn't  been  kind  enough  to  lasso  the 
bear  and  bring  his  dear  old  wife  out  to  see  it,  and  if  those 
darling  mules  hadn't  spilled  her  all  over  the  sweet  old 
mountains,  and  if  you  had  taken  any  other  one  of  a  million 
short  cuts  except  just  that  one  past  just  that  divine  rattler, 
you'd  still  be  in  Brewster  County  and  that  snake  up  there 
might  have  bitten  me  if  I  had  chanced  to  come  out  alone. 
Good  Lord!  but  you  are  a  complicated  young  man.  The 
angels  must  have  sat  up  nights  working  out  your  career." 

Larrick  mumbled  with  a  sudden  gloom,  "Maybe  it  wasn't 
angels  that  did  it." 

"Why  do  you  doubt  that?" 

"Because  my  story  isn't  finished  yet,  and  I  won't  know 


82  BEAUTY 

whether  I'm  meant  for  heaven  or  hell  till  you  tell  me 
whether — " 

"Oh,  you're  not  going  to  start  that  again!"  Clelia 
laughed  and,  rising,  darted  down  the  mountain  side. 

Larrick  lumbered  after  her,  feeling  like  a  bear  pursuing 
an  antelope — one  of  those  antelopes  he  had  seen  in  Texas, 
where  the  attempt  was  making  to  domesticate  them  and 
cross  them  with  more  stolid  stock. 

In  his  pursuit  of  Clelia  they  came  suddenly  upon  Norry 
Frewin,  who  was  stealing  along  a  trout  stream.  Frewin's 
face  lighted  up  when  he  saw  Clelia,  but  it  darkened  when 
Larrick  appeared. 

And  then  Larrick  wished  that  he  had  never  stepped  in 
front  of  the  pistol  aimed  at  Frewin,  had  never  placed  his 
brow  against  the  muzzle  and  saved  the  jealous  fiend. 

But  then  he  would  never  have  found  Clelia.  He  realized 
with  torment  that  it  seems  impossible  to  unwish  one  slightest 
thing  in  the  past  and  to  keep  anything  else  that  followed  it. 


CHAPTER  III 

GOOD  deeds,  in  spite  of  all  the  advertisement  they  get, 
are  as  often  repented,  perhaps,  as  evil  deeds;  and 
nothing  looks  sillier  or  more  mawkish  in  retrospect  from 
an  altered  point  of  view.  And  nothing  is  bitterer  than  a 
repented  gratitude. 

Larrick  and  Frewin,  who  had  begun  their  acquaintance 
as  instantaneous  comrades,  a  very  Damon  and  Pythias  in  a 
moment,  were  glaring  at  each  other  now  with  distrust  and 
hostility.  And  this  just  because  a  volatile  girl  had  floated 
between  them  like  a  silver  bubble. 

Time  would  show  that  neither  of  them  was  to  catch  or 
hold  that  bubble,  but  at  the  moment  it  was  the  one  important 
thing  on  earth,  and  the  rivals  were  ready  to  trample  each 
other  down  as  stepping  stones  for  a  higher  clutch. 

Clelia  plainly  understood  the  jealousy  she  inspired,  and 
plainly  reveled  in  it.  She  was  at  the  age  when  Nature 
seems  to  demand  that  the  highest  female  ideal  shall  be  the 
exciting  of  as  much  jealousy  and  as  frantic  a  desire  in  as 
many  males  as  possible.  Laws  and  moralities  and  fairy 
stories  of  love  frown  on  this  instinct  as  a  deviltry,  but 
Nature  has  her  way,  let  opinion  be  what  it  will.  Everybody 
laughs  at  King  Canute  for  ordering  the  tide  back  and  getting 
his  feet  wet,  yet  everybody  is  always  imitating  his  folly  and 
commanding  the  domestic  tides  to  stand  still  or  to  ebb  when 
they  are  on  the  flood. 

Larrick,  looking  back  on  the  living  frivolity  of  the  Clelia 
who  stood  just  outside,  all  frore  in  the  moonlit  ice,  shuddered 
to  remember  how  cruel  she  had  seemed  to  him  that  day  as 
she  giggled  over  the  torments  she  inspired  in  the  two  men 
who  worshiped  her,  and  hated  each  other  instead  of  their 
tormentor.  At  that  moment  he  had  hated  her  a  little,  too, 
but  with  the  hate  which  is  the  sharpest  proof  of  love. 


84  BEAUTY 

After  he  had  glared  down  from  the  high  path  at  Frewin 
knee-deep  in  the  tumult  of  the  stream,  and  Frewin  had 
glared  up  at  him  while  the  torrent  carried  his  hook  into  a 
tangle  of  roots,  Larrick  felt  compelled  to  say  something, 
and  could  think  of  nothing  better  than: 

"What  luck  you  havin'  down  yonda?" 

Frewin  had  snapped  back:  "Rotten!  And  the  same  to 
you  up  yonda!" 

Larrick  reddened  with  angry  confusion,  but  Clelia  snick- 
ered aloud,  and,  more  to  nag  Frewin  than  to  comfort  Larrick, 
called  down: 

"Don't  tell  on  us,  Norry  darling.  We  have  decided  to 
keep  our  engagement  secret  for  a  while." 

Then  she  seized  Larrick's  hand  and,  drawing  it  close  to 
her  side,  marched  down  the  steep  path  leaning  on  his  arm 
and  howling  a  wedding  march : 

"Hail  to  the  bride!    Hail  to  the  bride! 
Lah,  de-de-dah  de-de-dah  de-de-dah-dah!" 

Larrick  could  hear  the  enraged  Frewin  lashing  the  air 
with  his  fishline,  and  he  was  in  a  worse  psychological  snarl 
as  to  his  own  duty  in  the  premises. 

Should  he  accept  Clelia's  announcement  as  pure  burlesque 
and  try  to  laugh  with  her  over  what  was  no  laughing  matter 
to  him  ?  Should  he  affect  to  misunderstand  her  and  take  the 
announcement  as  a  final  surrender  to  the  proposal  he  made 
every  time  he  got  her  alone? 

The  latter  seemed  the  more  gallant  thing  to  do,  though  he 
was  not  at  all  surprised  when  she  flung  his  arm  away  the 
moment  she  was  out  of  Frewin's  sight.  He  caught  back 
her  hand  and  pleaded: 

"I'm  takin'  this  mighty  se'iously,  Miss  Clelia.  I'm  goin' 
to  announce  our  engagement  to  the  fust  pusson  I  meet." 

She  put  her  finger  in  her  mouth,  cast  her  eyes  down,  and 
in  a  parody  of  Priscilla  simpered,  burlesquing  his  Texan 
accent: 

"  Whah,  Mista  Larrick,  haow  praoud  you  make  me!" 

She  fascinated  him  so  with  her  incorrigible  impertinence 


THE   PROLOGUE  85 

that  he  grew  desperate  enough  to  reach  for  her  in  a  frenzy 
of  impatience. 

She  stood  still  in  the  loop  of  his  arms  and  eyed  him 
down  as  she  spoke  with  more  dignity  than  she  had  a  right: 

"Don't  be  any  damneder  fool  than  you  have  to." 

His  arms  fell  away  and  he  cringed  with  humiliation.  She 
laughed  even  at  this  with  that  mercilessness  of  youth 
Nancy  Fleet  had  spoken  of.  And  away  she  went,  like  a 
tantalizing  butterfly,  drifting  down  the  mountain  side. 

Larrick  stood  fast,  trying  to  be  man  enough  not  to  follow. 
But  he  was  too  much  man  to  give  her  up,  and  jogged  after 
her,  feeling  as  ungainly  in  mind  and  body  as  a  balky  steer 
yoked  to  a  galloping  colt. 

When  Clelia  was  out  of  breath  she  sat  down  on  a  log  that 
spanned  the  equally  frivolous  stream.  She  motioned  Lar- 
rick to  sit  by  her,  and  enjoined  any  sentimentalism  by  speak- 
ing as  if  he  had  never  suggested  love: 

"You  told  me  how  you  found  your  fortune,  but  you 
haven't  told  me  about  Ma  Milman's  leg.  Did  you  get  the 
doctor  or  didn't  you?" 

His  self-respect  debated  whether  he  ought  to  sulk  or  to 
ignore  his  insult.  He  decided  to  be  as  good  a  loser  as  he 
could. 

"Well — "  he  began,  when  who  should  emerge  from  the 
screening  thicket  but  Nancy  Fleet  and  Roy  Coykendall? 

Instantly  Larrick  felt  so  guilty  before  the  eyes  of  Nancy 
that  he  hardly  noted  the  sudden  wrath  that  turned  Coyken- 
dall's  sun-scorched  features  livid. 

But  the  fleeting  impression  photographed  itself  on  his 
remembrance  and  was  filed  away  and  overscored,  only  to 
come  forth  in  palimpsest  now  on  this  bitter  night  after  these 
many  weeks. 

Coykendall's  anger  was  as  different  from  Frewin's  as  the 
touch  of  a  toad  from  the  wrath  of  a  tiger. 

It  came  upon  Larrick  that  Coykendall,  being  a  man  of 
experience  and  cynical  reaction  to  experience,  had  visited 
his  rage  upon  Clelia  and  not  upon  Larrick.  Frewin  hated 
Larrick  for  pursuing  Clelia.  Coykendall  hated  Clelia  for 
making  a  fool  of  Larrick  and  of  himself.  As  always,  he 


86  BEAUTY 

treated  Larrick  with  a  certain  disdain,  more  intolerable  than 
Frewin's  -really  flattering  jealousy. 

Nancy  was  for  going  her  way  after  a  casual,  "Hello!" 
that  failed  to  be  as  indifferent  as  she  meant  it  to  be. 

Larrick  was  stabbed  with  a  sudden  intuition  that  if  any- 
body could  have  murdered  Clelia  it  would  have  been  Coykendall. 
Frewin,  he  was  sure,  would  have  murdered  a  man,  if  anybody. 
He  felt  that  he  had  turned  up  a  clew,  and  went  back  greedily  to 
his  reminiscence  of  the  encounter. 

But  Clelia  sang  out  in  the  rural  dialect  she  liked  to  employ : 

"Set  in,  folks,  and  listen  at  the  goldarndest  yarn  ye  ever 
did  hear." 

Nothing  sounds  stranger  on  the  ear  of  memory  than  the  bad 
manners  and  flippancies  of  the  dead,  the  silly  little  things 
tossed  off  in  fleeting  whims.  It  seems  almost  a  disloyalty  to 
remember  them. 

Larrick  had  been  used  to  Clelia's  childish  way  of  making 
fun  of  him.  He  rather  enjoyed  it,  but  what  hurt  him  won- 
derfully then  was  her  invitation  to  the  others  to  stop  when 
they  were  going  by.  She  insisted  on  turning  their  twosome 
into  a  foursome.  He  wanted  to  be  alone  with  Clelia,  and 
if  she  cared  for  him  she  would  want  to  be  alone  with  him; 
yet  she  insisted  on  dragging  in  outsiders. 

This  trifle  convinced  him  mightily  that  he  had  made 
little  impression  on  her  heart,  and  he  was  cruelly  dis- 
heartened. Thus  love  builds  mountains  out  of  molehills  for 
its  own  despair. 

Miss  Fleet  and  Coykendall  had  their  own  spiritual  dis- 
comforts to  digest,  but  they  stopped  because  they  had  not 
the  courage  to  move  on. 

Clelia,  holding  them  as  the  Ancient  Mariner  held  the 
wedding  guest,  gave  them  a  mocking  synopsis  of  Larrick's 
serial  up  to  the  point  he  had  reached. 

"The  mysterious  stranger  has  just  been  telling  me  the 
story  of  his  life,  how  he  was  a  poor  but  honest  cow-poker 
down  in  a  hell  hole  of  a  desert,  and  his  boss's  wife  broke 
her  leg  because  a  dead  bear  scared  a  mule,  and  Mr.  Larrick 
started  to  fetch  a  doctor  from  an  Alpine  village  a  million 
miles  away  to  set  said  leg,  and  as  he  was  cutting  across  lots 


THE   PROLOGUE  87 

a  most  obliging  rattlesnake  jumped  at  him  and  knocked  him 
off  his  hoss  and  he  fell  into  a  quicksilver  mine  worth  a  million 
dollars  and  sold  it  afterward  to  his  friend  Rothschild.  And 
I  was  just  asking  him  about  the  next  installment  when  you 
two  young  lovers  butted  in." 

As  Nancy  and  Coykendall  both  notoriously  loathed  each 
other,  this  allusion  added  to  the  discomfort  that  Clelia 
loved  to  create  in  her  impish  moods. 

But  it  was  a  dull  afternoon  and  Nancy  was  as  unwilling 
to  leave  Larrick  alone  with  Clelia  as  Coykendall  was,  so 
they  dropped  on  the  ground  and  begged  for  the  story. 

Larrick  did  not  want  to  go  on,  but  Clelia  bullied  him  into 
it,  so  he  yielded  rather  than  to  appear  to  want  coaxing. 
He  soon  warmed  up  to  the  theme  as  one  inevitably  does  who 
tells  his  own  story  to  an  audience  that  sits  still  and  makes 
at  least  a  pretense  of  interest. 

"Well,"  he  welled,  "after  my  hoss  th'owed  me  and  I 
picked  up  that  chunk  of  cinnabar  I  sat  still  a  long  while, 
figuring  out  how  much  money  I  might  make  in  case  I  made 
any,  because  I  wasn't  plumb  sure  that  place  wasn't  staked 
out. 

"I  looked  around  and  found  there  was  quite  a  showing  of 
cinnabar  as  far  as  I  could  see.  The  stream  had  washed 
away  the  sand  down  to  the  rock;  then  the  winds  had 
blowed  the  sand  over  the  rocks  again,  and  hid  it  from  any- 
body else  who  might  have  been  passin' — if  anybody  did. 
Then  just  before  I  came  along  another  wind  had  cleared  off 
a  little  of  it  again. 

"Well,  I  had  run  across  a  pocket  of  cinnabar.  There  were 
close  on  to  two  hundred  tons  of  it  there,  though  I  didn't 
find  that  out  till  later,  of  course. 

"I  wrapped  that  chunk  of  cinnabar  in  a  handkerchief 
and  tucked  it  inside  my  shirt.  Then  I  caught  my  hoss. 
He  was  foolin'  round,  feelin'  too  lonesome  and  lost  to  run 
away.  Then  I  lit  out  for  the  nearest  ranch.  I  remembered 
poor  Ma  Milman  and  her  broken  leg,  and  I  was  pretty  much 
anxious  to  get  to  Alpine  on  my  own  account  before  that 
cinnabar  pocket  did  a  vanish. 

"I  realized  that  that  hoss  of  mine  was  going  to  take  too 


88  BEAUTY 

long  to  make  that  ninety  miles  to  Alpine,  so  I  turned  in  at 
Bowditch's  ranch.  I  didn't  want  to,  because  old  Bowditch 
and  Pa  Milman  weren't  any  too  good  friends,  and  Mrs. 
Bowditch  had  plumb  insulted  Ma  Milman  because  she  heard 
her  swear  once  on  a  Sunday.  Ma  was  drivin'  a  team  of 
mules  at  the  time,  the  same  pair  that  broke  her  limb  for 
her  when  they  got  scared  of  the  bear.  And  anybody  that 
blames  anybody  for  cussing  out  a  mule  has  funny  ideas. 
But  the  Bowditches  had  a  flivver  and  Mrs.  Bowditch  couldn't 
run  it,  anyways,  so  she  had  no  occasion  to  swear.  But  she 
wasn't  speaking  to  Ma  Milman  at  the  time. 

"I  felt  kind  of  delicate  about  borrowing  the  Bowditch 
flivver  on  Ma's  account,  but  on  second  thoughts  I  decided 
it  was  all  the  more  reason  to  use  it.  So  I  rode  in  and  asked 
Bowditch  to  harness  up  the  fliv  and  take  me  to  town. 
When  he  asked  why,  I  told  him,  and  he  allowed  he  couldn't 
spare  the  time.  I  had  put  my  gun  on  when  I  went  out  to 
see  what  scared  the  mules  home,  so  I  put  the  gun  in  Bow- 
ditch's  stummick  and  allowed  that  I  could  tell  him  where 
he'd  spend  eternity  if  he  didn't  step  along  right  smart.  So  he 
did.  He  rolled  out  the  rusty  old  tin  lizard  and  we  got  into 
the  can  as  snug  as  a  pair  of  sardines. 

"We  began  the  jounce  across  the  desert,  making  such  a 
rattle  that  the  rattlesnakes  gave  up  in  disgust.  But  we 
hadn't  gone  many  miles  before  the  engine  began  to  sputter 
and  loaf.  Bowditch  got  out  and  looked  her  over  and  said 
the  blamed  old  radiator  was  leakin'.  We'd  been  trundlin' 
that  old  sprinklin'  can  across  the  sand  and  wasting  precious 
water  on  a  place  that  even  a  cloudburst  couldn't  do  much 
more  than  moisten  down  for  a  few  minutes. 

"Down  there  in  Brewster  County  water  is  the  fust  and 
last  thing  we  think  of.  They  sink  big  tanks  where  they 
can  to  catch  rain  water  when  there  is  any  and  hold  it  between 
showers.  But  we  were  a  long  ways  from  the  next  water  hole 
and  a  longer  ways  from  the  last  one. 

"Old  Bowditch  scratched  his  head  a  long  while  and 
allowed  we  could  never  make  it,  on  account  of  the  radiator. 
I  got  out  my  old  six-gun  and  said  it  was  feelin'  right  leaky, 
too,  and  he'd  better  pray  for  an  inspiration  or  something. 


THE   PROLOGUE  89 

There  was  just  a  mite  of  water  in  the  radiator  and  it  was 
tricklin'  out  fast,  but  Bowditch  got  his  inspiration,  though 
it  was  a  long  while  a-comin'. 

"He  found  a  box  of  Uneeda  biscuits  in  the  car.  He'd 
brought  'em  along  for  his  supper.  Well,  he  crumbled  the 
crackers  up  and  fed  'em  into  the  radiator,  and  they  made  a 
kind  of  a  paste,  I  reckon,  and  stopped  up  the  leak  wherever 
it  was.  Then  we  emptied  our  canteens  in  on  top  of  what 
water  there  was  left,  and  the  engine  began  to  pop  once 
more.  We  moved  like  a  bull  snake  with  the  rheumatiz,  but 
we  crawled  to  the  next  tank.  Always  carry  some  crackers 
with  you,  folks,  when  you  go  motoring. 

"Well,  anyways,  we  loaded  the  radiator  up  good  and  went 
flyin'  along  the  trail.  But  we  were  a  long  ways  from  Alpine 
when  it  come  on  dark.  Then  Bowditch  found  that  the 
lights  wouldn't  work.  I'd  'a'  shot  him  right  there,  but  I 
didn't  want  to  be  left  alone  in  the  desert  with  a  flivver, 
and  we  couldn't  go  very  far  without  a  lamp.  But,  as  luck 
would  have  it,  just  before  the  twilight  petered  out  we  came 
to  an  old  'dobe  barn  with  a  thatched  roof. 

"There  was  nothing  to  it  but  to  put  up  there  till  daybreak. 
So  we  did,  and  mighty  glad  not  to  have  to  sit  up  in  the 
flivver  all  night. 

"Bowditch  rolled  himself  up  in  the  lap  rope  and  told  me 
he  hoped  I'd  die  durin'  the  night. 

"The  next  thing  I  knew,  old  Bowditch  was  shakin'  me 
and  sayin',  'Are  you  allowin*  to  lay  abed  all  forenoon? 
It's  nearly  five  o'clock.' 

"We  pushed  on  in  the  car  and  made  Alpine  in  pretty  good 
time,  considerin*.  The  doctor  didn't  want  to  go  to  the 
Milmans'  much.  He  said  he  had  all  the  patients  he  could 
handle  in  Alpine.  But  I  told  him  what  Pa  Milman  had  said 
about  fetchin'  him  one  way  if  I  didn't  another.  And  I 
allowed  that  if  he  didn't  set  Ma  Milman's  bones  he'd  have 
so  many  of  his  own  to  set  that  he  wouldn't  practice  on  much 
of  anybody  but  himself  for  considerable  of  a  time;  so  he 
said  he'd  come  along. 

"While  we  were  waiting  for  the  doctor  to  leave  farewell 
pills  on  all  his  patients  I  put  my  claim  in  the  hands  of  a 


QO  BEAUTY 

lawyer  I  could  trust  and  promised  I'd  give  him  a  rake-off 
if  he  made  good,  and  I'd  shoot  his  head  o2  if  he  didn't  run 
straight. 

"Then  we  piled  the  doctor  and  his  kit  of  tools  into  Bow- 
ditch's  flivver  and  we  went  pirooting  back  to  the  ranch. 

"Poor  Ma  Milman  was  almost  dead  with  that  broken 
bone  those  two  days  and  all  that  night  and  we  didn't  dare 
tell  her  the  doctor  came  in  the  Bowditch  car  or  she'd  have 
refused  to  see  him.  The  doctor  fixed  her  up  fine,  and 
before  I  left  Alpine  she  was  up  and  about,  cussin'  the  greasers 
out  and  babyin'  the  white  men  the  same  as  usual. 

"I  took  Pa  Milman  into  my  confidence  about  my  dis- 
covery and  he  said  he'd  lend  me  the  money  to  buy  the  land 
from  the  state,  if  it  was  state  land,  or  from  whoever  owned  it. 
He  wouldn't  go  shares  with  me,  either.  He  said  I'd  worked 
hard  for  him  and  saved  his  wife  from  being  a  cripple,  and  if 
I  could  turn  over  a  few  dollars  by  selling  a  little  loose  mer- 
cury I  was  welcome  to  it. 

"Old  Bowditch  nearly  suffocated  when  I  told  him  he  had 
to  take  me  and  the  doctor  back  to  Alpine,  but  I  saw  to  it  that 
he  did.  As  soon  as  we  reached  town,  what  do  you  suppose 
I  found  out?  Don't  trouble  to  guess,  for  you'd  never  make 
it.  My  lawyer  told  me  that  land  was  part  of  Bowditch's- 
property ! 

"  I  nearly  passed  out  right  then.  But  I  went  up  to  the  old 
skinflint  and  told  him  I'd  like  to  buy  a  piece  of  grazin' 
land  off  him  down  near  the  Milman  ranch.  He  said  I 
couldn't  have  it  for  less  than  five  dollars  an  acre,  and  after 
a  lot  of  hemming  and  hawing  I  said,  'All  right!'  Then  I 
felt  kind  of  guilty  and  as  if  I  ought  to  ask  him  about  the 
mineral  rights.  But  he  spoke  up  fust.  He  says,  'For  a 
dollar  extry  per  acre  I'll  sell  you  the  mineral  rights,  too.' 
I  could  tell  by  the  yalla  look  in  his  eye  that  he  was  tryin' 
to  put  something  over  on  me,  so  I  felt  better;  it  didn't 
seem  so  bad  stealing  from  a  thief.  So  I  says,  '  All  right,'  and 
the  lawyer  fixed  up  the  quit-claim  deed  at  six  dollars  an  acre, 
bindin'  me  to  pay  so  much  down  and  the  balance  within 
thirty  days.  When  I  signed  it  Bowditch  like  to  laughed 
himself  to  death,  tellin'  me  how  he'd  stuck  me. 


THE    PROLOGUE  91 

'"You  didn't  happen  to  know,'  he  says,  'that  I  can't 
sell  you  the  mineral  rights,  because  I  had  only  the 
grazin'  rights,  the  mineral  rights  bein'  reserved  to  the 
public-school  funds?' 

"Texas  land  laws  are  complicateder  than  anything  this 
side  of —  Well,  anyway,  you  see  when  the  Texas  Republic 
consented  to  join  up  with  the  U.  S.  she  kept  all  her  un- 
claimed lands  for  herself  and  turned  'em  over  to  the  school 
funds  with  a  lot  of  reservations.  But  my  lawyer  had  looked 
it  all  up  and  told  me  that  the  old  law  had  been  changed 
and  the  title  to  what  was  under  the  ground  went  with  what 
was  on  top.  When  he  told  Bowditch  that  the  old  fool's 
jaw  dropped,  but  he  says:  'It  don't  make  any  diff,  for 
there's  no  mineral  there.  I  been  over  every  foot  of  it.' 
I  says,  'If  you  didn't  find  any,  then  a  hawk  couldn't,'  and 
that  pleased  him  so  he  rode  me  back  to  his  ranch  and  I  went 
the  rest  of  the  way  on  my  hoss  that  I'd  left  there.  Pa 
Milman  loaned  me  some  greasers,  and  I  went  out  to  work 
the  claim.  I  turned  up  some  pools  of  mercury,  and  sold 
what  I  got  for  enough  to  pay  Bowditch  without  borrowing 
a  cent  from  Pa  Milman. 

"When  Bowditch  saw  me  carryin'  my  first  wagonload 
of  quicksilver  past  his  place  to  Alpine  and  learned  what 
I'd  found,  he  almost  shook  himself  to  pieces  like  he  was 
his  own  flivver. 

"Well,  I  was  putting  a  little  money  in  the  Alpine  bank 
every  so  often  and  some  of  the  swells  in  town  were  invitin' 
me  to  stay  to  supper  and  some  of  the  leaders  of  society 
there  were  dressin'  up  special  for  me. 

"My  highest  ambition  was  to  buy  a  house  in  town  and 
live  under  my  own  palm  tree  and  windmill — every  yard  in 
Alpine  has  a  windmill  bloomin'  like  a  big,  immense  sun- 
flower, for  water  down  there  is  what  champagne  is  up  here 
since  prohibition  extended  the  desert  from  coast  to  coast. 

"  Then  one  day  a  mining  engineer  wandered  on  to  my 
property  and  asked  a  lot  of  questions  and  poked  his  nose 
around  a  good  deal.  Pret'  soon  he  asked  me  if  I  didn't 
want  to  sell  out.  I  said,  'Not  'specially.'  So  he  offered  me 

ten  thousand  dollars  for  my  claim.     I  nearly  fell  off  my  hoss 
7 


92  BEAUTY 

on  to  his  neck,  and  I  nearly  laughed  myself  to  death.  I  was 
thinking  of  all  the  things  I  could  do  with  ten  thousand 
dollars.  But  he  thought  I  was  makin'  fun  of  his  offer  and 
befo'  I  could  sober  down,  he  says,  '  Well,  how  about  twenty 
thousand,  then?' 

"I'd  played  one  or  two  games  of  poker  in  my  day,  and 
I'd  kind  of  learned  to  size  up  a  bluffer,  who  was  pretendin' 
his  hand  was  not  very  good  and  just  bettin'  easy  to  en- 
courage the  suckers.  So  I  stopped  laughin'  and  threw  a 
little  bluff  of  my  own.  I  growled,  'What  do  you  mean 
comin'  down  here  and  belittlin'  my  property  when  I  been 
polite  to  you?' 

"Well,  it  worked.  When  he  bid  fifty  thousand  I  ordered 
him  off  the  place.  He  said,  'Seventy-five,'  and  I  told  a 
greaser  to  lead  him  to  the  road.  He  h'isted  her  to  a  hundred, 
and  I  says,  'I  got  no  mo'  time  to  waste  on  you,'  and  I  rode 
off  at  top  speed.  The  first  big  rock  I  turned  I  stopped  and 
peeked  round,  scared  to  death  for  fear  I  had  pushed  him 
to  his  limit.  But  there  he  come  ridin'  after  me,  so  I  jammed 
the  rowels  into  my  cayuse  and  beat  it  for  the  little  'dobe 
house  I  had  put  up. 

"Well,  he  got  there  soon  after  I  did,  and  his  fust  words 
were,  'A  hundred  and  twenty-five.'  I  says,  'Light  off  and 
let  me  give  you  some  supper.  I  hate  to  see  a  po'  crazy 
man  goin'  hungry  raound  here.' 

"My  greaser  cook  gave  him  samefrijoles  and  tortillas  and 
coffee  and  I  gave  him  a  genuine  alfalfa  cigar.  Well,  he 
wouldn't  let  me  go  to  sleep  befo'  he'd  pointed  out  how 
foolish  it  was  for  me  to  try  to  work  that  claim  in  all  the  heat 
and  sweat,  and  havin'  no  access  to  the  real  market.  He  told 
me  that  I  ought  to  sell  out  and  go  to  New  York  or  Paris 
and  have  a  good  time.  'You  don't  see  the  Baron  Roths- 
childs down  here  eatin'  alkali,'  he  says.  'You'll  find  them 
swellin'  round  in  Paris  and  Monte  Carlo,  like  you'd  be 
doin'  if  you  had  any  sense.  I'm  actin'  for  the  Rothschilds,' 
he  says,  'and  I'll  give  you  twice  what  you  could  earn  on 
your  own  and  give  it  to  you  in  a  lump.  These  mercury 
pockets  are  tricky  and  they  don't  last  forever.  You've 
got  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  it  here,  if 


THE    PROLOGUE  93 

it's  worked  scientific,  and  that's  my  last  price.  Take  it  or 
leave  it.' 

"I  told  him  I  was  sleepy  and  rolled  over.  But  all  that 
night  I  dreamed  of  being  a  swell.  I'd  never  been  out  of 
Texas;  born  there,  like  my  grandfather  was.  My  great- 
grandfather was  born  in  Missouri  when  it  belonged  to  Spain. 
His  father  went  there  from  Virginia  with  old  Moses  Austin, 
who  fought  Indians  with  one  hand  and  mined  lead  with  the 
other.  When  the  Austins  went  down  into  Texas  my  great- 
grandfather went  along  as  a  boy.  The  Spanish  gave  him  a 
hundred  and  sixty  acres;  every  child  got  that  much  and 
every  slave  eighty. 

"Then  Mexico  broke  away  from  Spain,  and  the  trouble 
with  the  Americans  began.  My  great-great-grandfather 
was  one  of  the  men  who  founded  the  Fredonian  Repub- 
lic. You  never  heard  of  it,  I  reckon.  It  only  lasted  a  few 
weeks. 

"Mexico  freed  the  slaves  and  that  made  trouble  with  the 
Americans.  My  great-grandfather  was  at  the  consultation 
that  started  Texas  off  as  a  republic.  Then  he  went  with 
Colonel  Bowie  to  the  Alamo,  and  of  course  he  never  came 
back.  So  you  see  we  came  from  one  of  the  originalest  fam- 
ilies there  were  in  Texas." 

The  word  "Alamo"  had  a  vaguely  heroic  sound  in  the 
ear  of  the  Northerners,  but  Clelia  was  weak  on  history. 
She  ventured  to  ask: 

"Why  didn't  your  father  come  back  from  the  Alamo?" 

Larrick  glanced  at  her  aghast.  "Good  Lord!  Don't  you 
remember  the  Alamo?" 

"I  ought  to,  I  suppose,  but  I  don't,"  Clelia  confessed. 

"Did  you  ever  hear  of  Thermopylae ?"  Larrick  asked,  out- 
raged to  sarcasm. 

"Oh  yes!    That  was  pounded  into  me  at  school." 

"Well,  as  the  saying  was,  Thermopylae  had  one  messenger 
of  defeat,  but  every  man  in  the  Alamo  died  fighting.  Two 
women  and  two  children  and  two  slaves  were  spared.  That's 
all.  Four  thousand  Mexicans  attacked  a  hundred  and 
eighty  Americans  and  paid  a  mighty  high  price  for  'em. 
But  they  got  'em  all.  A  great-aunt  of  mine  was  one  of  the 


94  BEAUTY 

two  women  left,  and  she  carried  the  news  of  the  massacre 
to  General  Sam  Houston  and  was  on  the  retreat  with  him. 
So  was  my  granddaddy,  and  he  was  at  the  battle  of  San 
Jacinto  when  the  President  of  the  Mexican  Republic  at- 
tacked the  President  of  the  Texas  Republic  and  got  his 
whole  army  annihilated  or  captured.  They  caught  old 
Santa  Anna  himself  the  next  day  and  the  Mexican  Republic 
kept  the  flags  at  half  mast  for  months  while  her  President 
was  a  guest  of  the  Texas  Republic.  They  ought  never  to 
have  turned  the  old  scoundrel  loose. 

"You  Northerners  didn't  want  to  let  Texas  into  the 
United  States  and  it  took  ten  years  to  persuade  you-all. 
But  here  we  are,  and  I  reckon  everybody  was  satisfied. 
But  it  took  a  lot  of  blood  to  make  old  Texas  what  she  is 
to-day.  The  Indians  used  to  take  a  shot  at  nearly  every- 
body while  the  greasers  rested,  and  vice  versa. 

"My  own  grandmother  fought  Indians  and  my  grand- 
father was  killed  with  two  of  her  children.  She  was  dragged 
out  of  the  burning  cabin  when  her  last  shot  was  fired,  and 
she  took  along  her  nursing  baby.  That  was  my  father. 
While  they  were  dragging  her  along  an  Indian  buck  cut  off 
her  hair  and  fastened  it  to  his  own  to  make  it  look  longer. 
He  was  going  to  kill  the  baby  for  crying,  and  grandma 
knocked  him  down  with  a  big  stick.  The  other  Indians 
laughed  at  him  and  he  let  the  baby  live.  Otherwise  you- 
all  would  have  missed  the  pleasure  of  my  society.  A  trader 
finally  ransomed  grandma  for  four  hundred  yards  of  calico 
and  some  blankets.  He  married  her  later. 

"Oh,  you  see  I  come  from  one  of  the  very  first  families 
as  you  come  up  from  the  South.  But  you  didn't  ask  me 
about  my  pedigree.  I  was  tellin'  you  about  that  mining 
engineer  and  how  he  offered  me  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  for  my  little  mercury  farm.  I  didn't  be- 
lieve there  was  really  that  much  mercury  in  the  world,  but 
I  said  to  the  M.  E.: 

"'Well,  seeing  as  you  are  so  set  on  getting  my  little  old 
mine  for  your  baron  friend,  I  reckon  I'll  have  to  let  you 
have  it.  I  never  could  deny  a  baron  anything.  I  suppose 
he'll  expect  me  to  pay  him  a  long  visit  on  his  ranch  at 


THE    PROLOGUE  95 

Monte  Carlo,  and  we'll  ride  in  and  shoot  tip  the  bank  every 
Saturday  night.' 

"The  M.  E.  allowed  we  would  and  we  closed  the  deal. 
I  wanted  to  divyy  up  with  Pa  Milman,  but  he  threatened 
to  cut  my  nose  off  if  I  didn't  get  the  hell  out  of  there.  I 
bought  Ma  Milman  a  few  presents,  includin'  a  Packard 
so's  she  could  ride  over  Mrs.  Bowditch  whenever  she'd  a 
mind  to.  Then  I  got  her  a  Victrola  and  some  records,  for 
she  was  very  partial  to  Caruso,  and  now  she's  got  that 
Dago  almost  wore  out  singin'  to  her  every  night.' 

"Well,  it  was  the  strangest  thing  how  different  the  world 
looks  when  you  look  at  it  from  the  top  of  a  pile  of  money. 
I'd  been  dreaming  of  a  pretty  little  pine  shack  in  Alpine 
with  a  palm  tree  and  a  couple  of  ornamental  cactuses  and 
a  windmill  all  my  own.  But  the  minute  I  got  money 
Alpine  looked  kind  of  small.  I  wanted  to  hit  out  for  the 
white  lights.  I  decided  to  buy  New  York  and  push  old 
John  D.  off  the  map.  When  I  got  here  I  found  that  my 
quarter  of  a  million  would  only  buy  a  little  stack  of  white 
chips,  hardly  enough  to  ante  with,  to  say  nothing  of  any 
reds  or  blues.  But  here  I  am  and  here  I  stay  while  my  pile 
lasts." 

Clelia  had  listened  to  him  as  to  a  visitor  from  Mars;  his 
life  and  his  language  were  almost  as  unlike  hers  as  if  he 
came  from  a  foreign  planet.  Perhaps  he  mistook  her 
curiosity  for  fascination.  As  long  as  her  eyes  were  bright 
upon  him  he  would  talk  about  himself. 

Now  she  wondered  how  he  had  ever  drifted  into  her  realm, 
for  she  belonged  to  what  the  excluded  call  the  exclusive  set, 
though  the  circle  is  far  easier  to  enter  than  any  labor  union 
if  one  chances  to  prove  interesting — and  it  is  hard  to  see 
why  anybody  should  be  admitted  if  he  is  not  interesting. 

Still,  Clelia  had  wondered  how  Larrick  had  happened  in, 
and  she  said: 

"It's  amazing  how  many  accidents  it  took  to  get  you 
your  money.  What  accident  threw  you  in  with  our  gang?" 

"Oh,  it  was  just  my  run  of  luck,"  said  Larrick.  "I  had 
happened  to  meet  up  with  Norry  Frewin  when  he  was 
visiting  our  little  state,  and  when  I  came  to  New  York  I 


96  BEAUTY 

just  thought  I'd  look  him  up.  And  I  did,  and  he  took  it 
upon  himself  to  save  me  from  falling  in  with  the  wrong 
folks,  knowing  I  was  young  and  innocent  and  not  to  be 
trusted  with  money." 

"Tell  them  how  you  happened  to  meet  me  in  Texas," 
Frewin  said. 

"Why,  when  did  you  horn  in?"  Larrick  asked.  "Last 
I  saw  of  you  you  were  trying  to  whip  a  trout  to  death." 

Frewin  had  joined  the  group  unseen  by  Larrick.  He  had 
wrenched  his  line  free,  leaving  his  favorite  fly  in  the  rocks, 
and  had  followed  Clelia.  When  he  had  seen  Coykendall 
sitting  next  to  her  his  anger  toward  Larrick  had  been  molli- 
fied by  his  greater  distrust  of  Coykendall.  He  was  afraid 
of  Coykendall  and  afraid  for  Clelia  in  the  man's  company. 

Frewin  had  warned  Clelia  to  beware  of  the  fellow,  but  that 
had  made  him  all  the  more  fascinating,  since  playing  with 
fire  is  one  of  the  favorite  games  of  young  girls  when  they  can 
find  any  fire  to  play  with. 

Somehow  it  struck  Frewin  as  good  tactics  to  magnify 
Larrick.  Perhaps  he  thought  that  he  could  divert  Clelia 
from  Coykendall  by  heroizing  the  Texan.  He  had  little  real 
fear  that  she  could  ever  take  the  cowboy  seriously. 

So  now  he  repeated  his  behest  to  Larrick : 

"  Tell  them  what  you  did  for  me  in  Texas." 

Larrick 's  brown  face  turned  a  little  ruddier  as  he  mumbled : 

"I  been  braggin'  about  what  a  wonderful  feller  I  am. 
Don't  make  me  give  myself  away  for  a  thunderin'  imbecile." 

"You  did  the  bravest  thing  a  man  ever  did,"  Frewin 
insisted,  and  he  would  not  be  estopped. 

He  made  a  little  epic  of  it,  and  though  Larrick  grew 
sheepish  with  embarrassment,  the  women  liked  him  all  the 
more  for  his  humility  under  praise. 

Clelia,  with  a  young  girl's  idolatry  for  physical  courage, 
was  troubled  with  a  feeling  of  awe,  an  emotion  so  unusual 
to  her  that  she  grew  shy  and  awkward  under  its  spell,  as 
everybody  does  when  a  new  emotion  catches  him  unawares. 

She  sighed:  "To  have  saved  somebody's  life! — how 
marvelous!  I'd  give  my  right  arm  just  to  be  able  to  say 
I'd  saved  somebody's  life!" 


THE   PROLOGUE  97 

She  sprang  to  her  feet  and  strode  homeward.  Frewin 
scrambled  up  to  follow  her,  but  Coykendall  managed  to 
interpose  himself  and  shunt  Frewin  aside.  He  made  off 
down  the  hill  with  Clelia.  As  a  punishment  for  Larrick 
and  a  torture  for  Frewin,  no  doubt,  Clelia  took  his  arm. 

Frewin  gathered  up  his  fishing  rod  and  empty  creel  and 
turned  back  to  the  trout  stream. 

Larrick,  left  alone  with  Nancy  Fleet,  stared  after  Clelia's 
captor  with  a  rancor  poorly  disguised: 

"That's  what  we  call  cuttin'  a  heifer  out  of  the  herd. 
Coykendall  is  a  pretty  slick  article." 

"He's  a  beast  and  Clelia  knows  it,"  Nancy  snapped. 
"You'd  better  go  along  and  chaperon  them." 

Larrick  would  have  been  glad  to,  but  he  could  hardly 
leave  Miss  Fleet  alone  in  the  Adirondacks,  so  he  spoke  with 
rather  labored  courtesy: 

"I'd  rather  be  with  you,  if  you  don't  mind." 

"Liar!"  said  Nancy.  She  was  in  a  somber  mood,  and 
Larrick  felt  that  he  had  not  been  honorable  or  even  polite  to 
her.  She  had  been  the  recipient  of  his  first  gallantries  when 
he  came  North,  and  he  felt  that  he  had  incurred  a  certain 
obligation  to  keep  them  up,  even  though  Clelia  had  drowned 
her  radiance  as  the  will-o'-the-wisp  lures  the  eyes  from  the 
moon. 

Then,  as  they  strolled  toward  the  camp  and  lost  sight 
of  Clelia  and  Coykendall  in  the  piney  labyrinth,  Lar- 
rick began  to  suffer  from  the  venerable  sense  of  obligation 
the  male  inherits  from  the  immemorial  past,  an  imagined 
obligation  to  offer  the  dubious  compliment  of  an  embrace 
to  every  personable  female  he  finds  himself  alone  with. 

He  was  grotesquely  crass  in  his  motive  and  its  expression, 
and  nothing  could  have  been  more  idiotic  than  his  ursine 
clumsiness  when  they  walked  into  a  perfect  opportunity. 
A  lofty  cedar  sent  down  its  green  boughs  to  the  earth, 
making  a  wigwam  of  sheltered  solitude. 

Here  Larrick  paused  and,  laying  hold  of  Nancy's  firm, 
round  arm,  drew  her  toward  him  and  stammered  like  an 
overgrown  lout  asking  for  his  first  kiss: 

"It's  been  a  mighty  long  while  since — since — " 


98  BEAUTY 

The  words  were  too  gross  even  for  his  stupidity,  so  he 
drew  her  in  to  his  bosom  and  closed  his  long  arms  across  her 
fine  flat  back.  Once  she  was  in  his  embrace,  he  remembered 
with  a  kind  of  surprise  how  bewitching  he  had  found  her 
once,  and  how  the  apposition  of  her  form  to  his  had  once 
thrilled  him. 

He  stared  into  her  eyes  and  found  them  mystical  and  her 
mouth  luscious.  But  when  he  bent  his  head,  her  eyes 
blazed  with  indignation  and  her  mouth  trembled  with  scorn 
and  with  the  hurt  of  being  scorned. 

She  made  no  struggle,  but  simply  groaned,  "Oh,  for  God's 
sake,  spare  me  that!" 

His  arms  fell  to  his  side  and  she  walked  away. 

Larrick  could  only  follow  at  heel.  He  did  not  speak,  be- 
cause he  could  not  honestly  make  the  true  amends.  He  was 
compromised  in  his  own  soul  by  his  courtship  of  Clelia. 
He  decided  that  he  was  unfit  for  the  society  he  had  blun- 
dered into.  The  boarding-house  waitresses  in  Alpine  were 
about  his  measure.  He  wished  himself  back  there,  and 
wondered  why  he  had  ever  left.  His  money  had  made  a 
jackass  of  him  as  of  so  many  other  men,  from  Midas  down. 

How  dazzling  had  been  his  vision  of  the  conquest  of  New 
York,  and  how  unexpected  everything  had  turned  out. 
His  zigzagging  memory  ran  back  now  to  the  day  of  his 
departure  from  Alpine. 


CHAPTER  IV 

'T'HE  railroad  built  with  such  slow  and  bitter  toil  across 

1    the  desert  where,  as  the  saying  was,  "a  crow  would 

have  to  tote  his  rations,"  offered  the  swift  and  magic  escape. 

The  Sunset  Limited,  that  gorgeous  flying  serpent  on  its 
twenty-five-hundred-mile  flight  from  San  Francisco  to  New 
Orleans,  reached  Alpine  after  two  days  of  travel  through 
every  imaginable  scene  from  the  Pacific  shore,  over  moun- 
tains, down  below  sea  level,  and  up  and  down,  through 
orange  Edens  and  through  deserts  where  even  the  sagebrush 
falters.  It  crossed  the  sullen  Rio  Grande  at  El  Paso  and 
climbed  over  the  doleful  mountains  where  Alpine  perched 
five  thousand  feet  above  sea  level. 

At  half  past  nine  when  the  desert  night  was  chill  it  stopped 
and  took  aboard  only  one  passenger,  though  he  had  the 
celebration  of  a  bridal  party.  Nearly  everybody  in  Alpine 
was  at  the  station  to  bid  Gad  Larrick  speed,  and  every 
citizen  had  his  farewell  joke  to  fling  at  the  delegate  from 
Brewster  County  who  was  going  North  to  dehorn  the 
foolish  cattle  of  Broadway. 

Larrick  found  his  car  in  the  long,  dark  train,  and  the 
porter  led  him  to  his  drawing-room.  He  would  leave  in 
nothing  less,  though  he  had  had  to  buy  two  tickets  for  the 
privilege.  There  was  many  a  girl  in  Alpine  who  had  laughed 
at  him  once,  but  would  have  been  proud  now  to  share  his 
state  as  a  bride.  But  young  Lochinvar  rode  out  of  the 
West  alone. 

Leaving  his  very  new  luggage  in  the  drawing-room,  he 
made  haste  to  the  rear  of  the  train,  and  there  on  the  obser- 
vation platform  took  his  leave  of  his  origins.  The  butterfly 
was  pulling  out  of  the  shell  on  the  rough  bark  and  preening 
its  gorgeous  wings  for  the  rose  gardens  of  the  Orient. 

The  train  began  to  move  as  he  leaned  on  the  brass  rail. 


ioo  BEAUTY 

It  drew  away  from  the  darkling  town  and  the  dim  corollas 
of  the  windmills  everywhere.  As  the  rear  platform  reached 
the  station  the  throng  made  a  great  hullaballoo  of  farewell, 
a  chaos  of  good  will,  of  envy,  of  ridicule,  of  hilarity,  and  no 
little  regret  at  his  loss.  Alpine  had  seemed  a  metropolis  to 
him,  with  its  electric  lights  and  its  brick  buildings  and  its 
long  tie  rails  where  so  many  horses  were  always  hitched. 

He  felt  his  heart  ache  a  bit,  for  the  county  had  been 
mighty  good  to  him,  and  most  of  the  people  kind  and  jovial. 
It  had  made  him  rich,  and  he  was  a  traitor,  a  deserter. 

The  uproar  died  as  the  neighbors  of  his  mediocrity  were 
drawn  into  his  yesterdays.  He  wished  that  he  might  take 
the  brave  and  much-enduring  little  town  into  the  Eastern 
ease  and  gayety  with  him.  He  supposed  that  he  would  never 
come  back,  and  that  filled  him  with  a  hundred  little  loneli- 
nesses. He  did  come  back,  and  under  circumstances  he 
could  never  have  foreseen.  But  that  was  far  away  in  his 
future. 

A  red  switch  light  made  a  ruby  in  the  dark,  then  winked 
out.  The  mournful  telegraph  poles,  which  were  all  the 
trees  there  were  hereabouts,  sprang  up  and  ran  back  mourn- 
fully. Three  of  them  seemed  to  pause  for  a  moment  on  a 
height  and  he  thought  of  a  picture  he  had  seen  of  three  empty 
crosses  on  a  hill  against  a  livid  sky.  But  the  train  ran 
away  from  the  symbol  as  the  world  runs  away  from  Golgotha. 
The  train  ran  with  a  clickety-clickety-click  as  if  a  darky 
minstrel  troupe  were  accompanying  it  on  the  rattle-bones. 

For  a  time  there  were  only  the  familiar  stars  in  the  heavens 
and  never  the  light  of  a  home  on  the  soil.  The  serrated 
horizon  rose  up  behind  the  train  and  mountains  closed  around 
the  region,  embracing  it  as  a  man  might  enfold  a  little  woman. 
The  horizons  took  on  a  nobility.  The  sky  was  quickening 
with  the  moon  dawn.  And  slowly,  as  if  a  great  eyelid  were 
being  lifted,  the  west  whitened,  and  finally  the  eyeball  of 
the  moon  rose  above  the  black  fan  of  the  mountains. 

Soon  the  sky  was  hued  like  a  turquoise  matrix.  The 
mountains  grew  mellower  of  outline  and  became  at  length 
such  round  hills  as  the  Greeks  called  breasts. 

Mile  after  mile  of  morose  land  swept  by.     Some  day  it 


THE    PROLOGUE  101 

would  be  conquered  and  sown  with  grain,  shaded  with  im- 
ported forests,  illuminated  with  bright  homes  and  crowded 
cities.  But  now  the  only  hints  of  mankind  were  the  occa- 
sional dots  of  color  as  a  switch  light  blinked  from  red  to 
green  automatically. 

Now  and  then  a  white  culvert  was  passed  with  a  grunt. 

After  a  while  the  train  came  to  a  halt  in  the  most  dismal 
solitude.  Larrick  wondered  if  some  accident  were  going  to 
keep  him  here  for  hours.  The  train  began  to  back.  He 
grew  frantic.  To  reappear  in  Alpine  now  would  be  an 
unendurable  anticlimax. 

But  the  train  was  simply  adjusting  itself  to  a  siding. 
By  and  by  from  the  far  away  came  a  long,  faint  wolf  howl. 
Then  with  the  increasing  pulse  of  a  cavalry  charge,  the  wild 
hoofbeats  of  Indian  horsemen  charging  on  a  train  as  in  the 
olden  days,  the  west-bound  express  came  up,  and  shot  by 
with  the  roar  and  the  nebulous  glitter  of  a  comet.  As  it 
died  out  in  the  backward  hills  Larrick's  train  began  to  groan 
and  move  heavily.  Then  it  gained  power  and  speed  and 
resumed  its  course.  Larrick  was  glad  he  was  Eastering  with 
money  instead  of  going  West  to  make  it.  Some  day  he 
would  like  to  see  California  and  Hawaii,  but  now  he  was 
for  New  York.  He  hardly  imagined  the  magnitude  of  his 
country.  He  was  just  about  midway  now  and  at  the 
southern  edge.  The  train  that  passed  him  would  rush  for 
days  before  it  reached  the  Pacific,  and  his  train  would  rush 
for  days  before  it  reached  the  Atlantic. 

He  was  a  little  disturbed  by  the  short  posts  that  bobbed 
up  into  the  light  shed  by  the  observation  platform  and  shot 
the  word  "Derail"  into  his  eyes  before  they  were  erased. 
Life  is  so  full  of  derails ! 

Larrick  sat  puffing  the  best  cigar  he  could  buy  in  Alpine 
and  watching  the  little  tresses  of  smoke  float  back  like 
wafted  farewells.  The  desert  had  been  a  hell  to  him  for  a 
long  while,  but  it  had  grown  familiar,  and  he  felt  a  dull 
pang  at  climbing  out  of  it,  a  growing  fear  of  the  fabled 
lands  and  the  terrible  splendors  of  the  great  cities  he  was 
committed  to. 

He  brooded  over  the  heights  he  was  leaving  till  he  was 


102  BEAUTY 

the  last  passenger  remaining  on  the  observation  platform 
under  the  dome  of  light  that  ran  through  the  benevolent 
night  like  a  lantern.  All  the  strangers  who  were  going 
East  with  him  were  taking  their  souls  and  their  purposes  to 
bed  with  them  for  a  brief  respite  from  their  own  hopes  and 
fears. 

Finally,  tired  out  with  a  bewilderment  of  emotions,  he 
flung  his  cigar  overboard,  watched  it  strike  and  scatter  in 
sparks  and  vanish.  Then  he  entered  the  train  and  walked 
slowly  along  the  flying  platform,  staggering  through  cur- 
tained aisle  after  curtained  aisle,  bumping  into  muffled 
forms  of  men  and  women,  sidling  round  men  and  women 
undressing  or  clambering  to  the  upper  regions,  a  curious 
company  lost  for  the  nonce  to  the  usual  convenances.  He 
reached  at  last  his  own  drawing-room. 

It  was  his  first  drawing-room.  He  had,  indeed,  never 
lodged  in  a  first-class  hotel.  He  was  like  a  pauper  child  in  a 
palace.  He  played  with  the  hot  and  cold  water  and  the  ice 
water,  and  undressed  with  deliberation.  He  did  not  know 
enough  to  put  his  shoes  outside  the  door,  but  the  porter 
with  a  porter's  intuition  for  character  knew  that  it  was 
innocence  and  not  miserliness  that  withheld  the  shoes. 

To  one  who  had  thought  a  bunk  in  a  ranch  house  luxury 
after  nights  spent  on  the  hard  ground  there  was  a  glory  in 
the  privilege  of  creeping  between  linen  sheets  and  stretching 
out  on  mattresses.  He  felt  as  majestic  as  the  hero  of 
Bryant's  "Thanatopsis,"  lying  down  in  state  and  drawing 
the  drapery  of  his  couch  about  him. 

As  he  reposed  he  was  dragged,  as  it  were,  headlong  by  the 
neck  at  sixty  miles  an  hour,  faster  than  the  dead  Hector 
in  the  dust  of  Achilles's  chariot  and  with  as  little  knowledge 
of  the  landscape. 

The  next  morning  he  was  not  wakened  by  the  bawling 
of  the  foolish  white-faced  Hereford  cattle  with  their  brick- 
colored  hides  that  had  usually  sounded  his  reveille  when  he 
was  riding  herd,  nor  by  the  racket  about  the  bunk  house. 
But  habit  woke  him  as  the  daybreak  cut  in  like  a  paper- 
knife  under  the  curtain  he  had  left  a  little  up.  He  looked 
out  and  gave  a  lazy  peek  at  the  sleeping  town  of  Del  Rio; 


THE    PROLOGUE  103 

then  he  pulled  the  curtain  down  and  turned  his  back  on  the 
busy  world. 

This  was  his  first  great  sip  of  the  wine  of  opulence.  He 
could  lie  abed  and  let  others  work  for  him.  Thousands  of 
men  had  nailed  this  railroad  to  the  desert  for  him,  and  hun- 
dreds were  seeing  to  it  that  he  was  carried  to  his  destination. 
He  should  worry! 

But  he  had  not  learned  to  sleep  late  and  life  drove  him 
from  his  bed.  He  dressed  with  a  deliberation  in  his  Alad- 
din's-carpet  tent,  yet  he  was  the  first  man  in  the  dining  car 
for  breakfast.  Here  again  he  made  a  de"but  into  magnifi- 
cence. He  felt  a  very  grand  vizier  as  he  dipped  a  silver 
spoon  into  a  golden  melon,  and  he  lifted  his  coffee  cup  with 
the  amiable  arrogance  of  the  Sultan  himself. 

At  mid-forenoon  the  train  reached  "San  Antone."  He 
knew  the  city.  His  great-grandfather's  name  was  on  the 
monument  there  at  the  Alamo ;  his  nearest  approach  to  suc- 
cess was  to  have  "made  a  good  end,"  like  Polonius.  But 
the  great-grandson  stalked  about  the  station  during  the 
twenty-minute  wait  as  if  he  could  buy  the  city  if  he  wanted 
to — but  did  not  want  to,  because  it  was  not  costly  enough 
for  him. 

There  was  another  twenty-minute  wait  at  Houston.  Lar- 
rick  had  been  there  as  a  soldier  for  a  time,  a  poor  private, 
always  tired  and  always  hungry.  He  wished  he  might  stop 
now  for  a  banquet  on  the  airy  roof  of  the  Rice  Hotel.  But 
he  was  on  his  way  to  even  greater  caravansaries. 

The  next  morning  the  porter  had  to  call  him.  He  was 
already  learning  to  sleep  late.  At  New  Orleans  he  had 
several  hours  to  kill.  He  hired  an  automobile  and  lounged 
about  the  city,  through  the  narrow  streets  whose  iron  bal- 
conies and  Creole  charm  he  did  not  understand.  He  was 
not  for  narrow  streets  and  time-worn  buildings,  not  he. 
The  brand-new  was  what  he  searched  for. 

The  first  thing  to  win  his  royal  amazement  was  the  long 
passage  of  the  Illinois  Central  through  the  flooded  bottom- 
lands of  the  Mississippi  and  Lake  Ponchartrain,  which  he 
supposed  to  be  the  Atlantic  Ocean  or  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

To  Larrick,  who  had  spent  a  good  part  of  his  life  wondering 


104  BEAUTY 

where  the  next  pint  of  water  was  coming  from,  and  had 
lived  somehow  in  absolute  droughts,  lasting  at  times  through 
a  year  of  unclouded  skies,  nothing  was  more  dramatic  than 
this  appalling  misplacement  of  water.  The  train  ran  through 
miles  of  swamped  country  whose  damp  inhabitants  lived  in 
shacks  built  on  piles  with  rickety  plank  paths  zigzagging 
among  the  half-submerged  forests.  This  burlesque  Venice 
would  have  reminded  him  of  the  lake  dwellings  of  primeval 
Switzerland  and  the  crannogs  of  Ireland,  but  he  had  never 
heard  of  them. 

He  bewailed  the  wanton  folly  of  nature  which  drowned  one 
region  and  let  another  die  of  thirst.  He  mooned  over  some 
great  plans  for  diverting  the  Mississippi  into  the  deserts  of 
Texas  as  others  have  schemed  to  turn  the  Mediterranean 
into  the  Sahara,  that  vast  empire  of  waste  in  which  the  whole 
United  States  and  most  of  Alaska  could  be  planted  without 
overflow. 

But  Larrick  forgot  his  fantastic  projects  and  left  the 
desert  to  its  own  devices  when  he  reached  Chicago.  This 
was  his  first  great  city.  Here  he  saw  his  first  skyscrapers, 
his  first  art  gallery.  The  huge  lions  of  the  Art  Institute 
held  him  spellbound.  He  lingered  for  several  days,  fascinated 
by  the  wonders  of  the  place,  and,  after  being  knocked  aside 
by  the  crowds,  learned  to  forbear  gazing  up  at  the  tall 
buildings. 

He  studied  the  manners  of  city  people  with  an  eager  eye 
and  replaced  his  store  clothes  with  costumes  less  con- 
spicuous in  the  city. 

And  so  when  he  reached  New  York  he  was  not  quite  so 
green  as  he  had  been.  He  made  himself  a  trifle  foolish  about 
the  big  hotel,  but  he  was  as  quick  to  catch  the  amusement 
or  the  scorn  in  the  beholder's  eye  as  he  had  been  to  scan  the 
desert  for  a  rattlesnake. 

He  had  by  nature  the  gentleman's  desire  for  protective 
coloration  to  blend  with  his  background,  and  the  horror  of 
blatancy,  and  he  shed  his  outlandishness  with  great  rapidity. 
Days  and  nights  of  riding  about  the  city  and  the  beaches  in 
taxicabs  and  in  Seeing-New-York  wagons  exhausted  him. 
He  began  to  be  oppressed  by  that  loneliness  which  has 


THE    PROLOGUE  105 

always  made  cities  harrowing  to  strangers.  He  made  a 
few  of  such  acquaintances  as  every  town  offers  to  the  visitor, 
but  their  easy  vices  did  not  satisfy  his  soul. 

The  only  New  Yorker  Larrick  had  ever  known  was  Norry 
Frewin,  and  Larrick  hated  to  look  him  up  because  Frewin 
owed  him  money. 

But  the  memory  of  their  brief  friendship  and  the  hunger 
to  meet  some  one  who  had  once  cared  for  him  broke  down  his 
reluctance  to  impose  himself  on  anyone,  especially  on  a 
citizen  of  that  New  York  so  famous  for  its  alleged  indif- 
ference to  the  rest  of  the  country. 

Finding  young  Frewin  was  not  easy,  but  his  father's  busi- 
ness address  was  in  the  telephone  book  and  Larrick  visited 
the  bank.  With  some  difficulty  he  learned  Norry's  number 
and  called  it. 

A  valet  answered  in  a  prim  voice  and  asked  Larrick's 
name.  The  next  thing  Larrick  knew  was  the  rattling  of 
his  eardrum  as  Frewin  hailed  him  in  a  prairie  voice  with 
the  cordiality  of  one  desert  waif  to  another.  Frewin  as- 
sumed that  the  telephone  centrals  were  not  listening,  and 
with  necessary  expurgations  his  welcome  ran  somewhat  as 
follows : 

"Gad  Larrick!  That  isn't  you?  Why,  you 

old  !  bless  your  sweet  soul, 

what  in are  you  doing  in  this awful  hole?  What 

in  — —  name  ever  became  of  you?  I  sent  you  back  your 

money,  and  it  was  returned.  I  supposed  you  had  been 

shot  up  by  that  Spot  Caper  and  buried  in  his  private  grave- 
yard. How  long  have  you  been  here?  You  don't  mean  to 

say  that  you've  been  in  this  hole  a  week  and  not  let 

me  know!  Why,  you !"  etc. 

If  Galli-Curci  had  been  crooning  a  lullaby  to  him  Larrick 
could  not  have  been  more  soothed  and  reassured.  Frewin 
offered  to  come  and  get  him  at  his  hotel,  and  Larrick  went 
down  in  the  lobby  to  wait  for  him. 

It  was  not  on  his  own  account,  since  he  cared  little  for 
other  people's  opinions,  that  Frewin  was  anxious  lest  Larrick 
should  turn  out  to  be  the  same  wild  primitive  he  had  met 


io6  BEAUTY 

in  the  cattleman's  saloon.  Frewin  was  afraid  for  Larrick, 
lest  other  people  stare  at  him  and  disprize  his  golden 
heart. 

He  was  comfortably  disappointed  when  a  well-dressed 
young  giant  whom  he  had  not  recognized  at  first  glance 
spoke  in  a  voice  that  he  knew  at  once. 

Frewin  was  the  noisier  of  the  two  in  his  greeting,  and  the 
more  violent  in  his  hand-wringing.  He  even  embraced  his 
rescuer. 

He  demanded  that  Larrick  give  up  his  hotel  rooms  and 
move  to  the  apartment  he  kept,  but  Larrick  refused — on 
altruistic  grounds. 

He  refused  also  to  go  with  Frewin  to  dinner.  But  Frewin 
would  not  let  him  off: 

"You  can  live  at  the  hotel  if  you  insist  on  it,  because 
I  don't  want  to  interfere  with  your  private  flirtations,  but 
you're  not  going  to  get  out  of  my  sight  to-day.  I'll  put  you 
in  the  way  of  some  real  flirtations.  To-morrow  I  want  you 
to  meet  my  dad  and  mother.  They  are  going  out  of  town 
to-night.  They'll  both  take  you  into  their  hearts.  I  know 
my  mother  prays  for  you  every  night  and  on  Sundays  at 
St.  Bartholomew's.  The  old  man  was  so  scared  by  my 
disappearance  and  my  adventures  that  I've  got  him  eating 
out  of  my  hand.  He  pays  my  debts  as  fast  as  I  can  make 
'em  and  he  keeps  so  quiet  about  my  taking  up  a  serious 
business  that  I'm  beginning  to  be  tempted  to  try  it.  Be- 
sides, I'm  kind  of  crazy  about  a  girl — Clelia  Blakeney.  I 
want  you  to  see  her.  She's  to  be  at  the  dinner.  Keep 
your  eyes  off  her.  There'll  be  enough  others  for  you  to 
fascinate." 

Suddenly  he  remembered  that  he  had  not  asked  about 
Larrick's  affairs  or  his  evident  wealth.  It  was  so  natural 
to  Frewin  to  see  people  rich  and  in  New  York  that  his 
curiosity  was  not  aroused  at  first.  When  he  heard  of  the 
fortune  that  had  come  to  Larrick  he  groaned: 

"Oh,  hell!  Now  I  can't  do  anything  for  you!  I  was  in 
hopes  that  you  were  down  and  out  and  broke  and  I  could 
save  your  life  as  you  saved  mine  and  set  you  up  in  business 
as  you  did  me.  And  now  you've  gone  and  got  yourself  rich 


THE   PROLOGUE  107 

enough  to  buy  and  sell  me  a  dozen  times  a  day.  Just  to 
save  my  self-respect,  will  you  let  me  pay  back  what  you 
lent  me?" 

Larrick  was  already  sophisticated  enough  to  suppress  his 
natural  tendency  to  make  a  battle  over  the  return  of  the 
loan,  but  he  said,  "Keep  it  for  me  till  I  go  broke." 
8 


Book   III 
MISS  NANCY  FLEET 


CHAPTER  I 

TARRICK  had  bought  himself  evening  clothes  of  the 
1— 4  highest-priced  tailor  the  hotel  clerk  could  refer  him  to. 
He  had  thrown  himself  on  the  mercy  of  a  fashionable  haber- 
dasher. As  far  as  nine  tailors  could  make  him  he  was  a  man 
in  style.  He  was  a  gentleman,  too,  in  his  high  and  easy- 
riding  pride,  and  according  to  Sir  Herbert  Tree's  definition 
of  a  gentleman  as  "a  man  who  doesn't  care  whether  he  is 
one  or  not,"  Larrick  carried  his  self-respect  like  a  concealed 
weapon.  He  was  courteous  to  others  and  he  was  ready  to 
demand  what  he  gave.  He  was  not  a  New  York  gentleman, 
but  he  was  a  desert  gentleman,  and  he  wore  the  uniform  of 
the  occasion.  He  was  big  and  handsome,  humble  and 
haughty,  and  he  was  afraid  of  no  man. 

So  Frewin  knew  that  his  guests  would  find  him  worthy  of 
their  company. 

"When  I  tell  them  what  you  did  for  me  they'll  make  a 
lion  of  you,"  he  told  Larrick,  who  promptly  began  to  buck. 

"If  you're  goin'  to  spring  that  fool  yarn  you'll  make  a 
jack  rabbit  out  of  me,"  said  Larrick,  earnestly.  "If  you 
don't  promise  not  to  mention  it,  even,  I'm  not  going  to  be 
there  at  all." 

He  forced  Frewin  to  guarantee  him  against  any  such 
homage,  and  Frewin  kept  his  word.  Larrick  was  accepted 
as  Norry  Frewin's  friend.  If  he  had  a  past,  that  was  his 
affair.  His  immediate  behavior  was  all  that  concerned  the 
new  acquaintances. 

They  dined  on  the  roof  of  the  Ritz-Carlton  and,  thanks  to 
the  daylight-saving  law,  it  was  still  twilight,  though  the 
advanced  clocks  said  eight.  The  mixture  of  daylight  with 
the  lamplight  made  the  women's  dinner  gowns  look  a  little 
more  startling  than  they  would  have  in  the  artificial  light 
alone. 


ii2  BEAUTY 

Larrick  had  seen  a  good  deal  of  modish  dressing  and  tin- 
dressing  in  the  theaters  and  hotels  where  he  had  wandered 
like  a  steer  lost  in  a  city  street.  But  the  dresses  of  Frewin's 
women  guests! 

He  was  introduced  to  men  and  women  who  bore  names 
that  sounded  impressive  even  to  Larrick's  little-tutored 
ear.  Some  of  the  women  were  wives  and  their  husbands 
were  along.  And  they  seemed  to  be  honest-enough  women. 

But  the  amount  of  paint  and  powder  they  had  on  and 
the  amount  of  clothes  they  had  off ! 

Even  to  look  at  some  of  them  terrified  Larrick — not  be- 
cause they  were  not  good  to  behold,  but  because  he  could 
see  so  much  more  of  them  than  he  thought  he  had  a  right 
to.  He  drew  the  premarital  line  rather  high,  and  the  post- 
marital,  for  Mrs.  Roantree  was  there,  and  she  had  been  a 
widow  for  fifteen  years.  She  was  bulky  and  not  flirtatious, 
yet  she  dressed  as  low  as  the  rest  of  them.  It  must  be  a 
custom  of  the  country!  Larrick  would  come  in  time  to  see 
that  costume  has  little  relation  to  morals,  but  for  the  present 
he  was  almost  paralyzed. 

He  was  acutely  embarrassed  and  kept  his  eye  on  his  nude 
plate  and  the  decollete"  clams.  The  guests  paid  little  atten- 
tion to  him,  as  is  the  New  York  wont  with  strangers  who  do 
not  command  it.  They  chattered  rapidly  to  one  another, 
answered  him  pleasantly  enough  if  he  spoke,  but  made  no 
effort  to  entertain  him  or  draw  him  out.  So  he  retreated 
into  silence,  feeling  as  absent  and  transparent  as  Banquo 
before  Macbeth  caught  sight  of  him. 

Frewin  had  been  fuming  since  the  guests  met  in  the  lobby 
and  all  the  way  to  the  roof  because  Nancy  Fleet  was  late  and 
Clelia  did  not  come  at  all. 

"That's  the  damned  little  Clelia  of  it!"  he  raged.  He 
had  got  the  crowds  together  to  be  with  Clelia,  who  did  not 
care  for  solitudes,  and  she  had  not  come  and  did  not  come. 
She  did  not  even  telephone  a  kindly  lie. 

"The  cat  has  forgotten  all  about  it  or  she  has  been  offered 
some  other  date  that  she  likes  better.  I  could  wring  her 
neck!" 

Henceforward  Clelia  was  a  name  stamped  on  Larrick's 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  113 

memory  by  her  emphatic  absence.  He  forgot,  before  the 
night  was  past,  the  names  of  the  other  guests,  but  not 
Clelia's. 

He  forgot  Nancy  Fleet's  name,  too,  but  not  her  face! 
Nor  the  rest  of  her!  She  came  in  with  Randel,  the  sculptor. 
He  might  have  modeled  her  as  she  stood  making  her  apologies 
for  being  "held  up  by  a  damned  traffic  cop  who  rowed  with 
her  fool  of  a  chauffeur." 

She  nodded  to  Larrick  when  he  rose  to  be  presented,  and 
went  on  talking  volubly,  impatiently,  with  a  venomous 
cynicism  that  her  laughing  features  belied,  and  her  singu- 
larly voluptuous  form  and  carriage. 

Her  place  was  just  across  from  Larrick  and  she  never 
looked  at  him,  except  when  her  glance  flicked  across  his  face 
in  passing  from  one  end  of  the  table  to  the  other. 

And  Larrick  carefully  avoided  looking  at  her.  He  avoided 
her  with  a  violent  intention  as  a  modest  citizen  caught  out 
in  the  streets  of  Coventry  might  have  kept  his  eyes  off  Lady 
Godiva  on  her  famous  ride — and  for  much  the  same  reason. 

But  Larrick  listened  to  everything  she  said.  She  startled 
him,  frightened  him  by  her  reckless  words,  the  profanity 
that  sprinkled  her  phrases,  as  if  it  had  no  meaning  to  her, 
the  shocking  freedom  of  her  allusions  and  her  audacious 
opinions. 

She  fascinated  him  as  a  sort  of  gleaming  and  beautiful 
serpent.  But  he  watched  her  only  out  of  the  corners  of  his 
eyes — which  is,  of  course,  the  best  place  to  watch  from, 
though  that  was  not  Larrick's  motive.  He  was  afraid  to 
gaze  at  her.  She  blinded  him  a  little  with  her  splendor  and 
the  freedom  with  which  she  revealed  her  radiant  surfaces. 

As  the  long,  long  dinner  went  through  the  elaborate  ritual, 
the  waiters  so  solemn,  the  captains  so  attentive,  the  changes 
of  silver  and  china  so  frequent  and  complex — the  whole 
service  so  high-church  (and  the  conversation  so  low-church), 
Larrick  began  to  feel  that  Miss  Fleet  was  no  more  ignoring 
him  than  he  her. 

Such  impressions  are  made  up  of  so  many,  many  little 
emotions  and  manners,  inhibitions  and  excesses  and  arti- 
ficialities, that  they  seem  intuitional,  occultly  magical, 


ii4  BEAUTY 

though  they  are  no  more  miraculous  than  the  overwhelming 
mysteries  of  all  speech  and  understanding.  But  somehow 
Larrick  was  assured  that,  as  in  his  own  silence,  his  averted 
gaze,  his  avoidance  of  any  remark,  there  was  a  tremendous 
recognition  of  Miss  Fleet's  importance;  so  she  was  paying 
him  the  same  tribute,  thinking  of  him  while  she  talked  to 
everybody  else,  meditating  profoundly  upon  him  while  she 
seemed  to  utter  only  the  shallowest  of  chatter,  and  com- 
muning with  him  by  making  him  the  sole  recipient  of  her 
silence. 

This  thought  kept  him  enormously  interested  through  the 
dinner.  Frewin  wanted  to  talk  to  him,  but  Mrs.  Roantree 
was  at  his  right,  and  she  was  immense  and  continuous  in 
her  overbearing  tirade  about  something  or  other  that 
Larrick  was  too  busy  to  attend.  And  he  was  very  busy  with 
this  new  kind  of  game,  fencing  blindfolded  against  a  blind- 
folded adversary,  with  buttoned  foils  and  no  danger  of  blood- 
shed, but  an  intense  excitement  over  points. 

At  last  the  coffee  came  along,  and  the  tobacco — though, 
for  the  matter  of  that,  both  men  and  women  had  smoked 
before  and  during  the  entire  dinner.  There  had  been  no 
cocktail,  no  wines,  no  liquors — people  were  getting  along 
without  them  in  public,  resigning  themselves  dolefully  to 
the  inevitable,  and  solacing  themselves  as  best  they  could 
in  private,  growing  stingier  and  stingier  with  their  own  fail- 
ing supplies  and  more  and  more  greedy  of  other  people's. 
It  was  dismally  noted  that  in  the  homes  the  cocktails  were 
tending  more  and  more  to  become  unmitigated  orange  juice. 

Miss  Fleet  pushed  away  from  the  table,  sat  endwise, 
crossed  her  knees,  and  all  but  turned  her  back  on  Larrick. 
She  was  rattling  away  to*Randel  about  a  lot  of  people  Larrick 
never  had  heard  of — and  had  not  missed  much,  to  judge 
from  Miss  Fleet's  reference  to  them  as  muckers,  bounders, 
rotten  cads,  and  dirty  pups. 

Now  Larrick's  flattering  theory  of  the  masked  attention 
Miss  Fleet  had  been  paying  him  fell  to  the  ground,  and  his 
pride  suffered  a  severe  sprain.  Surely  if  she  were  really 
fencing  with  him  she  would  not  have  turned  her  back  on  him 
completely. 


MISS    NANCy   FLEET  115 

He  suffered  the  more  from  realizing  how  beautiful  a  prize 
he  had  lost,  for  now  he  could  steal  a  look  at  her  when  the 
others  were  not  looking  at  him.  He  was  astounded  at  her 
loveliness,  at  the  bewildering  pattern  of  her  coiffure,  such 
a  maze  of  architecture  built  out  of  such  delicate  and  in- 
numerable silken  threads.  He  stole  voracious  glimpses  of 
her  profile  that  ran  down  from  under  the  eaves  of  that  hair, 
the  brow,  the  nose,  the  felicitously  cut  lips,  the  delicious 
swirl  of  the  chin  in  the  throat,  the  flexile  shaft  of  her  neck, 
and  the  lines  and  planes  and  curves  that  ran  from  the  root 
of  the  throat,  across  and  around  the  shoulder  and  the  one 
arm  whose  elbow  was  on  the  table,  and  the  shoulder  blades, 
and  the — the — the  word  in  his  mind  was  "the  chest,"  but 
it  did  not  seem  quite  up  to  the  opportunities. 

He  was  despondent  with  the  loss  of  his  mad  fantasy  that 
this  glittering  creature  had  been  conversing  with  him  in 
thoughts  and  not  in  words.  He  did  not  know  her  name,  even, 
though  he  heard  her  called  "Nancy"  at  intervals.  He  was 
sorry  to  have  lost  her.  He  wished  bitterly  that  he  might 
have  interested  her  a  little  as  she  absorbed  him  much. 

Then  the  dinner  was  over.  Frewin  signed  the  check  and 
Tirft  a  bank  note  on  it  that  set  the  covey  of  waiters  to  bowing 
md»whisking  away  the  chairs. 

As.  the  guests  quitted  the  table,  this  one  and  that  one 
sapped  to  speak  to  some  friend.  Larrick  noted  that  some 
of  the  men  did  not  stand  up  even  when  a  woman  stood  by 
them.  It  was  too  much  trouble  to  be  always  rising  and 
falling,  he  supposed,  but  he  had  been  taught  otherwise. 
Larrick,  who  knew  nobody,  was  left  alone.  He  found 
himself  for  a  moment  standing  at  the  side  of  the  neglectful 
Miss  Fleet. 

To  his  stupefaction  she  turned  her  wonderful  head  and 
murmured  across  her  pluperfect  shoulder: 

"I've  had  such  a  glorious  flirtation  with  you  to-night. 
If  you  talk  as  well  as  you  keep  quiet,  come  and  see  me 
sometime." 

Just  then  a  woman  at  a  table  clutched  for  her  and  dragged 
her  into  a  knot  of  heads  to  hear  the  latest  horrible  story. 

Larrick's  heart  was  beating  like  a  triphammer  as  he 


1x6  BEAUTY 

realized  that  his  mad  guess  was  indeed  an  intuition.  He 
had  made  a  conquest  or  at  least  a  hit  with  the  queen  of  the 
world.  If  only  he  knew  her  name ! 

It  seemed  that  the  story  at  the  table  would  never  end. 
As  he  stared  across  the  straight  incline  of  Nancy's  back  his 
unseeing  eyes  were  wakened  by  a  surprising  sight. 

At  a  lonely  little  table  near  the  door  a  lone  woman  sat. 
She  was  dressed  like  the  rest,  in  much-disclosing  gown  whose 
brilliant  inspiration  even  Larrick  could  vaguely  recognize. 
But  her  face  was  swathed  in  a  thick  veil. 

Larrick,  recent  from  the  desert,  had  been  bewildered  by 
so  many  so  strange  phases  of  New  York  City  life  that  his 
faculty  of  wonder  was  a  whit  fatigued,  just  as  the  city  man, 
railroaded  through  the  American  deserts,  sees  so  many 
twisted  and  distorted  shapes  of  mountains  and  hills  and 
trees  that  by  and  by  he  hardly  lifts  his  eyes  from  his  book 
to  study  the  most  diabolic  contortion  of  landscape.  Only 
it  was  beauty,  infinitely  multifarious,  that  exhausted  Larrick. 

It  had  startled  him  a  little,  though,  to  see,  among  the 
brilliantly  undressed  women  dining  on  the  Ritz-Carlton  roof, 
one  woman  who  was  barearmed,  barebosomed,  and  bare- 
backed, but  not  barefaced. 

He  had  time  to  watch  her  for  a  moment  during  the  brief 
stasis  in  the  outbound  progress  of  the  party  he  was  with, 
time  to  be  puzzled  at  the  thick  veil  swathing  her  features. 
It  was  odd  to  see  her  lift  it  away  just  a  bit  to  carry  her  fork 
to  her  unseen  mouth.  And  it  was  doubly  odd,  when  he 
ventured  a  backward  glance,  to  note  that  she  had  a  cigarette 
pressed  against  her  hidden  lips  and  was  puffing  smoke 
through  the  mask.  There  was  something  almost  infernal 
in  the  vision;  her  face  was  only  a  black  veil  veiled  in  light 
smoke. 

What  we  can't  see  is  what  we  want  to  see,  and  Larrick 
wasted  no  attention  on  the  otherwise  challenging  revelations 
of  the  woman's  shapely  thorax.  His  brief  but  consuming 
inquisitiveness  was  solely  concerned  with  the  configuration 
of  her  nose  and  mouth  and  eyebrows  and  ears.  Such  in- 
quisitiveness would  have  been  considered  indecent  if  it 
regarded  other  portions  of  womanly  anatomy,  but,  outside 


MISS    NANCY   FLEET  117 

of  Islam,  is  permissible  when  directed  only  to  the  facial 
figure. 

Larrick  had,  however,  only  a  moment  or  two  of  torment, 
for  Nancy  stood  erect,  laughing  as  she  lightly  smacked  the 
cheek  of  the  man  who  was  telling  the  story.  And  she  moved 
on  with  Larrick  in  her  train.  He  was  wondering  less  about 
her  now  than  about  the  woman  in  the  lace  mask. 

As  Frewin  and  his  flock  passed  out  through  the  door  Nancy 
waved  her  hand  to  the  woman  and  the  woman  waved  to  her. 

Mrs.  Roantree  stopped  the  traffic  to  demand: 

"Who  was  that  person  in  the  veil?  Some  actress  trying 
to  get  up  a  mystery  for  advertising  purposes?" 

"No,  my  dear,"  said  Nancy,  "that's  Mrs.  Coykendall." 

"But  why  the  melodrama?" 

"  She's  another  poor  victim  of  the  craze  for  eternal  youth." 

"Then  why  doesn't  she  stay  at  home?" 

"But  she  has  no  home." 


CHAPTER  n 

NORRY  FREWIN,  like  a  bellwether,  led  his  flock  from 
the  dining  room  to  the  elevator.     In  the  lobby  below 
the  men  and  women  parted,  the  men  to  take  up  their  hats, 
the  women  for  a  bit  of  primping. 

Then  they  climbed  into  limousines  and  were  taken  to  a 
fantasy  of  Murray  Anderson's,  a  review  of  dances  and  songs 
and  comedies,  with  moments  of  extraordinary  grace. 

Here  there  was  less  than  usual  of  the  effort  to  startle  by 
unclothing  the  female  form  malign.  There  was  reliance 
rather  on  draping  it  and  posing  it  and  enveloping  it  with 
imagination,  using  it  as  a  part  of  a  fascinating  ensemble. 

From  the  long  array  of  graces  one  grace  was  pre-eminent, 
the  Bubble  Dance  of  Grace  Christie,  who  played  with  a  great 
iridescent  floating  sphere,  tossing  it  from  her  gracile  fingers 
and  drifting  beneath  and  about  it,  till  they  two  made  a  kind 
of  witching  music  for  the  eyes.  One  hardly  noted  how  she 
was  garbed  except  in  poetry. 

Larrick  had  wondered  what  was  to  become  of  those  poor 
theatrical  managers  who  had  once  earned  a  precarious  and 
surreptitious  living  by  giving  undress  parades  and  charging 
naughty  men  high  prices  to  witness  hired  girls  in  or  out  of 
tights.  For  the  war  had  sent  half  of  womankind  into 
breeches,  and  the  latest  styles  in  beach  wear,  especially  in 
the  Middle  and  Far  Wests,  had  crowded  leagues  of  sand 
with  half-naked  legions.  The  crusades  of  this  year  that 
thrilled  the  nation  most  were  whether  or  not  the  one-piece 
bathing  suit  should  be  allowed  or  arrested  and  whether  or 
not  stockings  were  essential  to  morals.  It  was  a  battle 
that  harrowed  the  whole  continent. 

In  Chicago,  when  Larrick  had  tarried  there,  he  had  ridden 
for  miles  and  miles  along  shoreside  avenues  disclosing  tens 
of  thousands  of  mothers  and  wives  and  daughters  who 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  119 

haunted  the  long  lake's  edge  in  costumes  growing  daily 
"smaller  by  degrees  and  beautifully  less" — and  were  the 
cleaner  and  healthier  in  mind  as  well  as  body  for  it. 

Times  were  changing  too  fast  for  record. 

Only  a  few  years  before,  a  popular  New  York  dancer  had 
been  arrested  and  fined  for  capering  on  a  Forty-second  Street 
roof  in  trunks  that  did  not  come  halfway  to  the  knees. 
And  this  June  the  graduating  classes  at  the  most  sedate 
universities  for  women  had  celebrated  their  Commencements 
by  pirouetting  solemnly  about  the  chaste  quadrangles, 
clothed  only  in  little  puffs  of  chiffon.  They  had  flaunted 
their  white  thighs  entire  in  numbers  counted  stately  and 
worthy  of  the  attention  and  the  applause  of  throngs  of 
mothers,  fathers,  and  others. 

These  young  ladies  must  have  been  respectable  because 
they  were  respected.  Studies  in  eurhythmies  had  been 
put  on  a  plane  with  ethics  and  as  much  spiritual  value 
claimed  for  them.  Right  or  wrong,  these  1920  girls  were 
fearfully  different  from  the  earlier  generations  who  had  been 
taught  that  while  most  girls  are  cursed  with  legs,  good  girls 
never  let  anybody  suspect  them  of  them. 

The  world  has  gone  far,  far  (in  one  direction  or  another) 
from  the  good  old  times  when  an  allusion  to  a  peeping  slipper- 
tip  was  audacious  and  the  mention  of  anything  between  a 
"well-turned  ankle"  and  a  well-rounded  throat  was  un- 
printable. A  slender  waist  was  granted,  but  the  rest  was 
terra  incognita. 

A  decision  of  womankind  to  confess  at  last  that  every- 
body has  a  standardized  anatomy  and  everybody  knows  it, 
and  that  no  apparent  good  had  ever  resulted  from  devoting 
a  complicated  lifetime  to  hiding  what  everybody  had  and 
knew,  was  one  of  the  profoundest  revolutions  in  human 
history.  Whether  it  is  a  progress  toward  sanity,  as  some 
maintain,  or  a  drift  toward  general  ruin,  as  others  aver,  it  is 
undeniably  a  change  of  era. 

It  came  along  with  a  world-wide  revolution  toward  cleanli- 
ness— asepsis,  the  compulsory  toothbrush  in  public  schools, 
neat  back  yards  and  alleys — the  universal  scrub.  People 
reverted  to  the  Greek  ideal  that  it  is  well  to  wash  often  and 


120  BEAUTY 

completely.  This  paganism  had  a  long  and  desperate  fight 
against  religion  and  respectability  and  there  are  many  women 
living  who  were  taught  as  children  that  they  should  not  be 
unclothed  even  in  their  bathtubs  lest  God  see  them  and  be 
shocked.  And  so  they  kept,  their  little  nightgowns  on  and 
did  the  best  they  could  beneath  the  veil. 

Ideas  of  God  change  with  ferocious  rapidity  to  suit  the 
whims.  People  justify  their  desires  by  making  them  sacred. 
They  call  their  fads  gods,  and  create  their  creators  as  they  go 
along.  The  physical  culturists  were  as  fanatic  in  1920  as  the 
physical  occulturists.  Millions  were  as  fervid  in  their  desires 
to  make  themselves  seen  as  millions  were  to  delve  into  the 
unseen.  In  fact,  almost  the  only  things  left  unseen  were  the 
disembodied  spirits,  and  the  only  bodies  about  which  there 
was  much  excuse  for  curiosity  were  the  astral. 

The  revolution  had  come  so  gradually  in  the  great  cities 
that  few  realized  how  vast  it  was.  It  took  some  man  like 
Gad  Larrick,  who  sprang  suddenly  from  the  back  regions 
into  Broadway,  to  realize  it. 

He  went  about  in  a  state  of  daze. 

In  the  theater  he  was  pleasantly  aghast.  He  was  young 
enough  to  take  a  fearsome  delight  in  wickedness.  He  was  as 
mischievous  as  only  a  cowboy  can  be,  grown  up.  He  was 
drunk  on  new  wine  and  he  would  be  a  long  time  sobering. 
All  about  him  were  women  in  thin  clothes  that  were  either 
absent  or  transparent,  and  next  to  him  was  a  nice-looking 
girl  whose  short  skirts  and  fidgety  attitudes  made  him  aware 
that  she  also  had  adopted  the  1920  fashion  of  rolled- 
down  stockings 

Philosophers  and  scientists  would  have  told  him  that  cos- 
tume is  only  a  typographical  error  for  custom,  and  makes  no 
real  difference.  But  Larrick  would  never  have  believed  this. 

He  would  have  agreed  with  the  preachers  that  the  world 
was  pretty  well  come  to  that  mysterious  realm  known  as 
Hell-and-gone.  But  he  was  glad  to  go  right  along  with  it. 

Nearly  everything  fascinated  him.  He  loved  nearly  every 
chorus  darling  on  the  stage  and  thought  them  all  wonderful 
in  their  several  endeavors.  As  he  put  it  to  Frewin  while 
they  smoked  cigarettes  outside  between  the  acts,  "Every 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  121 

little  cutie  is  doin'  her  damnedest  to  look  her  pirtiest." 
Perhaps  there  was  something  divine  in  his  sympathy  with 
beauty.  He  could  not  understand  the  jaded  indifference  of 
Frewin  and  Nancy  Fleet  and  the  rest.  He  was  sorry  when 
the  last  curtain  fell  and  Frewin  said,  "Let's  go  dance." 

Larrick  did  not  dance,  as  the  word  was  understood  up 
here,  and  he  did  not  enjoy  watching  others  dance — except 
on  the  stage.  But  he  went  along  meekly.  Frewin  took  his 
party  to  a  dance  club  where  he  hoped  Clelia  might  join 
them  through  repentance  or  lack  of  other  amusement. 

But  she  did  not  come  and  only  a  few  members  dropped  in. 

Larrick  had  cut  up  hilariously  in  lower  Texas  at  gatherings 
of  cow-punchers  and  sage  hens,  but  he  would  not  trust  his 
heels  in  this  sedate  assembly  where  the  sparseness  of  the 
numbers  made  the  earnestness  of  the  couples  who  spun 
solemnly  round  and  round  all  the  more  depressing  to  him. 

Mrs.  Roantree  was  official  chaperon  and  contented  herself 
with  lumbering  round  the  hall  three  or  four  times  in  the  arms 
of  Norry  Frewin  and  an  elderly  gentleman  whose  name 
Larrick  had  not  caught. 

Thereafter  Larrick  had  Mrs.  Roantree  for  his  sole  com- 
panion, except  during  the  brief  spells  when  the  music  stopped 
and  the  other  couples  sank  down,  panting  for  a  respite,  to 
drink  White  Rock  or  nibble  at  the  supper,  which  they  for- 
sook the  moment  the  jazz  was  resumed. 

Although  it  was  a  criminal  offense  under  the  new  prohibi- 
tion law  to  take  or  give  a  drink  outside  one's  own  home,  and 
though  the  pocket  flask  was  as  illegal  as  the  pocket  pistol, 
Frewin  produced  a  small  hip  flagon  and  warmed  all  the 
glasses  more  or  less  secretly. 

Nearly  everybody  was  a  criminal  nowadays,  for  the  dry 
law  had  put  the  whole  country  on  the  moral  plane  of  the 
Kentucky  moonshine  districts  and  three  fourths  of  the 
nation  connived  at  the  evasion  of  an  amendment  that  three 
fourths  of  the  nation  had  passed.  Revenue  officers  and 
liquor  burglars  continued  to  make  enormous  raids  on  the 
hidden  stores,  but  the  supply  was  mystically  replenished. 

The  highballs  he  imbibed  quickened  Larrick's  emotions, 
and  the  sight  of  Nancy  Fleet  transferring  herself  from  one 


122  BEAUTY 

manly  bosom  to  another  kindled  a  resentment,  almost  a 
repugnance,  in  his  heart. 

His  occult  flirtation  with  her  was  suffering  a  hopeless 
check.  She  was  dancing  farther  and  farther  away  from  him 
and  he  could  not  follow.  He  felt  that  certain  rights  of  his 
to  her  attention  were  being  violated.  The  claim  he  had 
staked  out  was  being  jumped.  That  was  a  shooting  matter 
in  Brewster,  but  he  was  helpless  here  to  defend  his  prospects. 

Seeing  how  his  eyes  burned  after  her,  she  dared  him  to 
make  a  try,  but  he  shook  his  head  sadly. 

She  realized  that  there  was  a  tribute  in  his  timidity  and 
counseled  him  to  go  to  a  teacher.  He  took  a  mighty  en- 
couragement from  this,  for  he  felt  that  she  wanted  to  dance 
with  him.  The  indirect  flirtation  began  anew. 

"To  be  in  New  York  and  not  know  how  to  dance,"  she 
urged,  "  is  like  going  abroad  without  French.  There's  a  love 
of  a  girl  who  could  turn  you  out  a  regular  Maurice  in  no  time. 
She  was  in  France  with  the  '  Y,'  and  when  she  wasn't  washing 
dishes  for  the  soldiers  or  selling  cigarettes  to  them  she  was 
dancing  with  them.  Poor  Sylvia,  she  must  have  one- 
stepped  and  fox- trotted  a  million  miles.  Do  go  to  her! 
I'll  give  you  her  address." 

To  resist  such  an  appeal  would  have  been  a  rebuff  that 
Larrick  would  never  have  dared  or  cared  to  administer.  So 
he  promised,  and  she  wrote  down  the  name  and  telephone 
number  of  Mrs.  Harry  Kadrew. 

From  then  on  Larrick  watched  the  dancing  in  another 
humor.  Now  he  tried  to  discover  and  remember  the  little 
mannerisms  that  distinguished  the  moderns  from  the  old- 
fashioned  dubs  who  hobbled  about  the  floor  in  manifest 
obsolescence,  trying  to  fit  last  year's  steps  to  this  year's  jig. 

At  two  o'clock  the  musicians  twisted  a  strain  of  "Home, 
Sweet  Home ' '  with  the  jazz,  and  in  spite  of  the  wails  of  more 
or  less  perfunctory  protest,  shook  their  heads  and  left  the 
stage.  And  the  dancers  took  their  inexhaustible  feet  to  their 
cars. 

Miss  Fleet's  hand  lingered  warmly  in  Larrick's  as  she  bade 
him  good  night.  He  would  have  been  glad  to  beau  her  home, 
but  Randel  had  that  privilege.  He  did  not  seem  to  prize  it 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  123 

as  he  should,  for  he  broke  in  on  Miss  Fleet's  gracious  words 
with  a  yawning  gruffness : 

"Oh,  for  God's  sake,  Nancy,  break  away  and  go  to  bed. 
I've  got  a  model  coming  in  the  morning." 

Larrick  thought  that  he  ought  at  least  to  shoot  the  dog 
down,  but  Miss  Fleet  sighed,  "And  I've  got  a  damned  hair 
dresser  at  nine."  And  she  climbed  into  the  limousine, 
leaving  Larrick  on  the  moonlit  curb  with  Frewin,  who  was 
still  cursing  Clelia  for  her  truancy.  Larrick  murmured: 

"Yew-all  are  suttainly  grand  cussers,  and  I  think  the 
ladies  have  a  little  the  best  of  it." 

0 


CHAPTER  III 

'"PHE  next  day  Larrick  telephoned  to  the  dancing  teacher 
1  Nancy  Fleet  had  commanded  him  to,  and  a  hospitable 
voice  invited  him  to  call. 

He  found  Mrs.  Kadrew  a  tall,  slim  sprite,  who  introduced 
a  husband,  a  handsome  young  fellow  and  pleasant-spoken, 
who  did  not  seem  surprised  or  offended  when  his  wife  took 
the  stranger  into  her  embrace  and  jounced  him  about. 

It  struck  the  uninitiated  Larrick  as  an  odd  job  for  so  nice 
a  girl  as  she  evidently  was  to  be  teaching  men  how  to  wrastle 
a  woman  around  a  room  to  music. 

He  could  not  get  it  out  of  his  head  that  there  was  something 
essentially  wicked  about  dancing.  His  early  training  had 
fastened  the  idea  upon  his  soul,  and  he  could  have  understood, 
though  he  might  not  have  approved,  the  Methodist  Church 
that  had  just  refused  to  admit  a  young  woman  to  member- 
ship because  she  taught  dancing. 

There  had  been  a  brief  civil  war  in  the  Methodist  Church 
that  year  on  the  whole  relation  between  amusement  and 
damnation,  and  the  hope  had  been  raised  that  the  ancient 
ban  on  theaters,  dances,  and  card  games  would  be  removed, 
but  the  ministers  in  synod  confirmed  the  taboo  by  a  vote  of 
two  to  one.  It  was  a  great  year,  1920,  for  enacting  prohi- 
bitions. But  a  poor  year  for  observing  them. 

To  Mrs.  Kadrew  dancing  was  an  honorable  and  helpful 
profession  that  she  practiced  without  hesitation  in  her 
husband's  presence.  To  the  Puritans  it  was  an  abomination. 
To  Larrick  and  his  sort  it  was  a  curious  indoor  sport,  more 
enhanced  than  hurt  by  the  reproaches  of  the  unco'  guid. 
His  soul  felt  a  pleasant  impropriety  in  it,  and  he  thought 
hardly  so  much  of  the  steps  Mrs.  Kadrew  took  as  of  the 
next  step  Mr.  Kadrew  was  likely  to  take. 

There  was  a   sense  of  intrigue,   almost  of  elopement, 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  125 

shaking  up  Larrick's  heart  when,  after  a  brief  lecture, 
Mrs.  Kadrew  affixed  herself  to  his  astounded  form,  set  his 
timorous  right  arm  about  her  waist,  and  made  off  with  him 
down  the  hall,  humming  a  melody  broken  with  sharp 
commands. 

Larrick  half  expected  Mr.  Kadrew  to  produce  a  gun  and 
empty  it  at  him,  but  Mr.  Kadrew  was  plainly  trying  to  keep 
from  laughing  aloud  at  Larrick.  Mrs.  Kadrew  made  no 
secret  of  her  own  amusement,  but  her  laughter  was  not 
insolent. 

"Don't  be  afraid  of  me.  I'm  not  afraid  of  you.  Go  on 
and  walk  on  my  feet.  Good  Lord!  I've  had  my  toes 
crushed  by  hundreds  of  the  best  feet  in  the  world." 

She  had  indeed  given  her  body  and  her  grace  and  her 
electric  energy  to  the  arms  of  an  army  of  soldiers,  men  on 
their  way  to  the  trenches  and  on  their  way  back,  men  just 
out  of  the  hospitals  or  freshly  returned  from  hells  of  terror 
and  misery. 

In  other  wars  most  of  the  women  who  followed  the  camps 
were  a  vile  herd,  and  around  the  camps  at  home  in  America 
the  worst  of  women  hovered  like  buzzards.  But  the  troops 
in  Europe  were  protected  by  the  ocean  and  the  passport 
screen,  and  the  government  sent  dancers  and  actresses 
abroad  with  the  credentials  of  vestal  priestesses,  sacred 
ministrants. 

Mrs.  Kadrew  was  a  veteran  of  that  strange  service  and  her 
peculiar  experiences  had  filled  her  heart  with  a  wholesale 
sisterliness.  She  had  inspired  a  reverence  hard  for  strict, 
old-fashioned  souls  to  comprehend.  If  some  of  her  soldiers 
had  been  old-fashioned,  too,  and,  finding  her  delectable  in 
their  arms,  had  crushed  her  a  little  too  fervidly  and  wooed 
her  wordlessly  too  boldly,  she  had  understood  and  forgiven 
and  danced  away  their  satyrism  with  a  redeeming  hilarity. 
The  best  way  to  put  out  a  fire  is  to  remove  the  oxygen — when 
that  is  possible. 

Mrs.  Kadrew  had  occasion  to  rebuke  Larrick,  too,  by 
simply  ignoring  or  pretending  not  to  understand  the  tentative 
messages  he  (almost)  unconsciously  conveyed  until  he  forgot 
to  flirt  and  began  to  study.  His  feet  annoyed  him  by  their 


126  BEAUTY 

stupidity  and  disobedience,  but  before  the  first  lesson  ended 
he  had  begun  to  catch  the  knack  and  to  guess  the  spirit  of  the 
new  dance. 

Mrs.  Kadrew  accepted  his  money  with  a  fine  simplicity. 
She  was  a  language  teacher  and  she  was  nothing  more  or  less. 
He  made  an  appointment  for  the  next  day,  and  took  his 
leave  a  gayer  and  a  wiser  man. 

He  felt  so  proud  and  smart  and  citified  that  he  decided 
to  call  on  Frewin  and  take  him  out  to  lunch.  Frewin 
had  put  him  up  with  two  weeks'  cards  at  an  assortment 
of  clubs. 

It  never  occurred  to  Larrick  to  telephone  and  ask  if  his 
visit  would  be  untimely.  He  picked  up  a  taxicab  and  tried 
to  look  as  if  he  had  been  cradled  in  one.  When  he  got  out 
he  slammed  the  door  and  paid  the  fare  and  the  tip  as  care- 
fully carelessly  as  if  he  were  acting  the  part  before  a  movie 
camera. 

Then  he  stalked  into  the  hall  with  his  stick  swinging  in  the 
best  Frewin  manner.  The  apartment  was  one  flight  up  and 
the  elevator  was  on  high,  so  he  decided  not  to  wait.  He 
turned  to  the  stairway  and  was  scooting  up  two  steps  at  a 
time  when  he  heard  a  peal  of  wildly  impish  laughter.  He 
heard  a  shower  of  footsteps  and  in  the  dark  crook  of  the 
stairway  collided  with  a  girl  whose  slight  form  was  descending 
with  such  velocity  that  she  almost  knocked  him  over. 

"Sorry!"  she  giggled  and  vanished  below. 

Before  he  could  recover  his  balance  heavier  feet  ran  down 
and  Frewin  crashed  into  him.  He  was  calling,  "Clelia, 
wait!"  and  instead  of  saying,  "Sorry,"  he  flung  Larrick 
aside  and  growled,  "Get  out  of  my  way,  damn  you!" 

Larrick  did  not  know  what  to  do,  so  he  went  up  and  waited 
at  Frewin's  open  door.  Then  he  decided  to  take  the  elevator 
down  and  escape  undiscovered,  in  order  not  to  embarrass 
Frewin.  Also,  he  was  considerably  shocked  at  encountering 
the  famous  Clelia  in  a  visit  of  that  character.  But  Frewin 
came  up  bareheaded  and  caught  him  before  he  could  get 
away. 

His  rage  collapsed  into  perfect  bewilderment. 

"Howdy!"  said  Larrick.    "I  was  just  passing  by,  so  I 


MJSS   NANCY   FLEET  127 

thought  I'd  drop  up  and  say, '  Howdy!'    And  now  I've  said 
it,  so  I'm  on  my  way.     S'long!" 

Frewin  could  not  accept  this,  but  he  was  befuddled. 

"I  can't  ask  you  in.  I'm  horribly  sorry.  I'm — er — not 
alone.  The  worst  of  it  is  that  little  devil  Clelia  chose  this 
time  to  call  on  me.  Of  course  she  knew  it  was  a  terrible 
thing  for  her  to  come  alone  to  a  bachelor's  apartment. 
That's  why  she  did  it.  Just  to  get  a  thrill  and  a  lecture 
from  me. 

"She  rang  the  bell  and  I  answered  it,  and  she  said, ' I  came 
in  person  to  apologize  for  being  such  a  rotter  and  breaking 
all  my  engagements ! '  She  wanted  to  come  in,  but  I  couldn't 
let  her  in,  and  I  made  a  mess  of  it,  of  course,  and  said, 
'  Sorry  I  can't  ask  you  in,  but  the  place  isn't  made  up  yet ' ; 
and  she  said:  'So  I  see.  Her  hat  is  still  left  on  the  consol!' 
Then  she  began  to  shriek  with  laughter  and  wouldn't  let  me 
explain.  Not  that  I  could.  But  she  ran  downstairs 
whooping  and  jumped  into  her  machine  and  drove  off, 
honking  like  a  hoot  owl. 

"And  now  I've  got  to  go  in  and  try  to  quiet  the  other 
hurricane  that's  waiting  for  me.  Oh,  Lord!  such  a  life! 
I'm  afraid  I  won't  be  free  to-day.  Can  you  get  along  some- 
how and  excuse  me  if  I  neglect  you  till  I  straighten  out  this 
mix-up?" 

This  gave  Larrick  a  good  tirade  for  his  exit,  and  he  made 
the  best  of  the  opportunity. 

"Good  Lawd,  man,  if  you  don't  quit  actin'  like  I  was  a 
baby  left  on  yo'  do'step,  I'm  goin'  to  leave  this  man's  town 
pronto.  You  don't  have  to  be  a  wet-nuss  to  me,  and  that's 
got  to  be  understood." 

Frewin  agreed  to  understand. 


CHAPTER  IV 

'"THAT  evening  Larrick  dined  alone  and,  in  spite  of  his 
1  wealth,  simply.  He  put  on  bis  dinner  jacket  in  order 
to  impress  the  waiters,  but  his  stomach,  too,  had  to  learn 
the  new  steps,  the  jazz  of  the  chefs.  He  picked  his  way 
with  care,  making  one  or  two  experiments  for  his  gastric 
education,  and  returning  to  his  fa.-mi1iq.rs  for  the  bulk  of  his 
diet. 

He  had  grown  beyond  the  first  stage  of  ignorant  opulence 
when  he  was  like  the  ancient  sudden-rich  prospector  who 
could  only  display  his  splendor  by  ordering-  "forty  dollars' 
worth  of  pork  and  beans."  Indeed,  Larrick  was  now  enter- 
ing the  mental  stage  of  beginning  to  see  the  reason  for  all 
these  forms  of  beauty  that  money  develops — beauty  of  plate 
and  tureen,  of  sauce  and  garniture,  of  flavor  and  spice. 

If  his  earlier  self  tould  have  seen  his  present  self,  the  cow- 
puncher  Larrick  would  have  been  disgusted  with  the  new 
Larrick,  and  called  him  a  disgraceful  fool,  a  snob,  and  a  toady, 
ruined  by  good  fortune  and  the  society  of  the  rotten  rich. 

Everything  New-Yorkish  and  European  and  capitalistic  had 
been  despised  by  him  and  his  fellows  in  the  rough  country. 

It  was  not  the  sour-grapes  spirit  of  the  philosophical, 
optimistic  fox.  It  was  the  contempt  of  those  who  had  never 
tasted  grapes  and  did  not  know  what  they  had  missed. 

And  now  Larrick  was  submerged  in  the  vineyard,  and 
eating  his  way  in  deeper.  In  spite  of  himself  he  was  finding 
New  York  a  wilderness  of  delights,  an  Eden  of  amazing  inno- 
cences, sweetnesses,  heartinesses,  a  playground  of  games 
outside  of  office  hours  and  during  worktime,  a  marvel  of 
efficient  wisdom. 

He  had  found  the  policemen  amiable,  the  street-car  con- 
ductors ready  to  pass  the  time  of  day  or  even  to  lend  him 
his  fare  when  he  found  once  that  he  had  left  his  purse  in  his 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  129 

room,  and  twice  the  skillful  pickpockets  had  made  off  with 
his  money  without  disturbing  him  in  the  slightest.  The 
waiters  were  of  a  hospitable  disposition  toward  Larrick, 
ready  to  earn  their  tips  in  advance.  Nearly  everybody  in 
this  so  much-abused  city  seemed  well  disposed  to  the  well 
disposed,  and  he  felt  enormously  at  home. 

His  dinner  was  soon  ended  and  he  set  out  to  walk  the 
unfailingly  fascinating  Broadway.  It  was  too  early  for  the 
theaters,  but  the  moving  pictures  were  available  all  day, 
and  they  ranged  from  little  ten-cent  halls  with  pictures  of  the 
dime-novel  sort  to  the  largest  theater  in  the  world,  the 
sumptuous  Capitol,  a  temple  of  incredible  distances,  the 
light  from  the  projection  machine  streaming  down  across  a 
sea  of  heads  with  the  effect  of  heavenly  shafts  illuminating  a 
seraphic  multitude. 

In  the  Capitol,  the  Rivoli,  Strand,  Rialto,  and  other 
cinemacoliseums,  every  olden  art  supported  the  new  art 
that  America  had  given  to  the  world,  an  art  more  nearly 
universal  than  music,  more  persuasive  than  the  drama,  more 
legible  than  any  other  literature. 

The  critics  reviled  it  and  gave  it  no  assistance;  but  its 
progress  was  as  irresistible,  its  growth  as  Gargantuan,  as  its 
blunders  were  inevitable  and  unimportant.  Its  very  plati- 
tudes and  patterns  were  part  of  its  world  manna. 

Larrick  was  early  for  the  crowd,  but  late  for  the  beginning 
of  the  six-reel  feature.  He  sat  down  in  the  midst  of  the  plot. 
Movie  audiences  had  grown  used  to  the  new  form  of  pleasur- 
able perplexity.  They  dropped  in  at  any  time  and  let  the 
current  of  the  story  carry  them  along  to  the  end.  Then 
they  sat  awhile  longer  and  watched  from  the  beginning  to 
their  point  of  entry.  Then  they  went  home  and  gave  way 
to  others. 

Women  had  been  doing  this  for  generations  with  novels, 
reading  the  latter  half  first.  It  is  as  good  a  way  as  any, 
and  novelists  often  practice  it  themselves  by  beginning  their 
stories  toward  the  end.  It  is  as  interesting  to  see  a  knot 
untied  and  wonder  how  it  came  to  be  tied  as  to  watch  its 
tying  and  wonder  how  it  is  to  be  solved. 

The  picture  Larrick  saw  was  one  of  the  innumerable  cow- 


i3o  BEAUTY 

boy  stories  that  America  never  tires  of  any  more  than  any 
other  nation  ever  tires  of  its  demigods  and  heroes — the 
cowboy  stories  of  which  the  rest  of  the  world  never  gets 
enough. 

Larrick  thrilled  with  the  accuracy  of  its  detail,  the  per- 
fection of  its  horsemanship,  and  the  familiar  eternal  plot, 
the  classic  protagonists,  the  sheriff  (now  hero,  now  villain), 
the  fugitive  (now  villain,  now  hero),  the  girl  (always  heroine). 

After  the  six-reeler  the  program  of  the  evening  began. 
The  orchestra  assembled,  the  huge  pipe  organ  bellowed. 
The  conductor  came  in  dramatically  and  led  an  overture  by 
an  old  master,  while  an  electrician  made  a  new  art  and  a  new 
poetry  of  living  colors,  an  art  hitherto  practiced  only  by 
the  angels  who  paint  the  dawn,  the  sunset,  and  the  moonrise. 

Then  a  dancer  came  forth  on  the  full  stage  in  an  American 
Orientalism.  She  was  no  less  a  personage  than  Evan 
Burrows  Fontaine  and  she  danced  with  grave  passion.  She 
wore  trousers  of  cloth  of  gold.  Her  shoulders  and  her 
waist  were  bare,  with  jeweled  disks  and  chains  across  the 
breast;  and  her  bare  feet  were  jeweled.  She  told  a  gloomy 
story  in  a  rhapsody  of  posture  and  transition.  Larrick 
was  spellbound  with  the  drama  and  with  the  flight  of  beauti- 
ful moments  and  colors,  following  pell-mell  as  in  a  kaleido- 
scope whirled  at  top  speed. 

A  news  reel  followed,  showing  the  armies  of  the  nations 
at  war  six  years  after  the  Great  War  had  begun  and  ended : 
the  Greeks,  the  Turks,  the  Arabs,  the  Irish,  British,  French, 
and  the  Poles  retreating  just  before  their  mighty  return,  when 
Pilsudski  threw  back  the  barbaric  tidal  wave  and  saved 
Europe  from  the  East  as  John  Sobieski  had  done  in  his 
ancient  day. 

Next  was  a  travel  picture  that  took  Larrick  along  on  the 
Shackleton  antarctic  voyage.  He  felt  the  keen  wind,  saw 
the  white  mountains  loom  and  pass.  He  hung  out  on  the 
bowsprit  and  watched  the  ice  shudder  and  split  and  veer 
away  as  the  ship  cut  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  dark  water; 
he  loved  the  dogs  and  laughed  at  the  penguins,  as  solid  and 
stupid  as  the  lumbering  critics  of  the  movies.  And  finally 
he  stood  with  the  rest  of  the  marooned  crowd  and  watched 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  131 

the  death  struggles  of  the  ship  as  the  ice  slowly  and  grimly 
overflowed  it,  crumpled  it,  and  buried  it. 

He  understood  the  epic  of  those  men  in  the  desert  of  ice 
at  the  under  end  of  the  world,  and  its  white  barrenness 
reminded  him  of  his  old  home  in  the  sand  and  alkali.  He 
wondered  that  men  should  leave  such  paradises  as  New  York 
for  the  strange  privilege  of  exploring  remote  hells  and  testing 
bitter  death  traps. 

But  that  is  man's  way.  Larrick  had  felt  the  need  of  the 
void  himself,  and  he  would  feel  it  again.  Just  now  he  was 
the  sailor  ashore  and  he  mocked  the  sea  and  its  dupes. 

The  inexhaustibly  versatile  camera  followed  the  antarctic 
scene  with  an  ambrosial  idyll  of  boy  life  in  a  mid-Western 
town,  and  Booth  Tarkington's  lovable  little  rascals  gave 
their  version  of  "Hamlet"  in  an  Indiana  barn,  with  tragic 
results  for  Edgar,  the  actor-manager. 

Then  the  six-reeler  began  again.  Larrick  saw  what  he 
had  missed,  and  rose  to  go.  He  pushed  through  the  mob 
standing  and  waiting  and  made  his  way  to  the  door. 

He  was  astounded  to  find  that  a  great  rain  had  been 
raging  while  he  had  been  traveling  on  Aladdin's  carpet. 
Just  as  he  stepped  out  a  rush  of  lightning  ripped  the  gloom 
from  the  streets  and  buildings  and  revealed  them  for  a  mo- 
ment in  a  noon  glare  as  if  to  make  a  perfect  target  for  the 
broadside  of  thunderbolts  that  crashed  across  the  roofs  and 
strangely  left  them  all  intact.  Then  a  deluge  until  the  people 
under  the  eaves  and  the  awnings  felt  that  they  stood  in  back 
of  Niagara. 

But  the  crowds  regarded  the  storm  rather  with  disgust 
for  its  inconvenience  than  with  terror.  For  the  electricians 
had  followed  Ben  Franklin's  lead;  they  had  snatched  the 
outlaw  lightning  from  the  sky  and  given  it  a  steady  job. 
The  wrathful  flashes  of  the  storm  were  almost  lost  in  the 
cascades  of  the  advertising  signs  where  the  chained  lightning 
was  toiling  over  the  iridescence  of  a  butterfly's  wing,  the 
burlesque  thunderbolts  of  a  theatrical  advertisement,  the 
caperings  of  kittens,  and  the  grotesque  behavior  of  acrobats. 

The  Subways  and  the  bowling  alleys  outroared  the  thunder. 
But  the  rain  was  wet,  and  ruinous  to  silks  and  slippers. 


i32  BEAUTY 

Larrick  beg-pardoned  through  the  men  and  women  hud- 
dled under  the  glass  and  iron  awning  and  looked  for  a  taxi. 
Some  of  the  women  ruefully  regarded  the  destruction  of  their 
street  market  by  the  rain  that  falls  alike  on  the  decent  and 
the  indecent,  and  Larrick  was  sorry  enough  for  the  poor 
things  to  feel  a  kind  of  Samaritan  obligation  to  offer  one  or 
more  of  them  a  share  in  his  cab.  But  there  was  an  em- 
barrassment of  wretches,  and  he  plunged  into  the  first  cab 
up.  He  gave  the  name  of  his  hotel,  which  by  a  familiar 
tmesis  he  still  called  the  "Worldoff." 

The  taxi  cut  through  a  cross  street  into  Fifth  Avenue 
where  at  this  hour  there  was  almost  no  travel.  The  cab 
was  shabby  and  jolty.  It  had  seen  better  nights  as  some- 
body's limousine;  but,  unconsciously,  Larrick  adjusted  him- 
self to  the  seat  in  the  pose  of  an  emperor.  Somehow  one 
almost  always  does  grow  haughty  in  a  cab,  especially  at 
night  when  nobody  can  see.  In  the  daytime  one  looks  still 
haughtier  by  trying  to  look  unconcerned. 

Generations  of  carriage  habit  seem  never  to  destroy  the 
majestic  feeling  of  being  alone  in  a  chariot  moving  triumph- 
antly through  crowded  rainy  streets  where  the  commoners 
huddle  in  doorways  or  hurry  along  in  misery.  Some  of  them 
may  be  aristocrats  waiting  for  their  own,  or  rich  strangers 
unable  to  get  a  taxi — but  they  all  look  poor  and  peasant  to 
the  rider-by. 

Larrick  was  as  arrogant  as  a  Roman  soldier  just  elected 
emperor  and  crossing  the  Rubicon  to  take  possession  of  the 
town.  Fifth  Avenue  was  now  his  own  private  Appian  Way. 
As  the  sky  flashed  and  sketched  in  dramatic  cornices  and 
porticoes  he  felt  quite  the  conqueror. 

The  new  signal  towers  gave  a  gala  splendor  to  the  occa- 
sion. The  long  yellow  beam,  clearing  the  way  for  the  north 
and  south  traffic,  ran  down  to  Larrick's  cab  in  a  tape  of  gold 
spread  across  the  striations  of  light  on  the  wet  pavement. 

Suddenly  a  red  ribbon  ran  alongside  it  and  then  the  gold 
blinked  out  and  the  green  lights,  releasing  cross-town  traffic, 
drove  away  the  red.  Larrick's  cab  came  to  a  stop  as  if 
checked  by  an  invisible  hand,  though  there  was  no  officer 
on  duty  there  except  a  ghostly  discipline. 


MISS    NANCY   FLEET  133 

A  mail  truck  lumbered  across  the  Avenue  and  vanished. 
A  curious  exultance  filled  Larrick's  frame,  as  if  the  elec- 
tricity uncharging  the  air  had  found  his  nerves. 

When  a  big  limousine  drew  up  slowly  and  stopped  along- 
side, Larrick  cast  it  a  glance  across  his  shoulder  and  felt 
oddly  like  a  lion.  He  became  a  man  at  once,  as  he  made 
out  a  woman  alone  in  the  other  car.  She  gazed  idly  at  him 
across  the  little  promontory  of  a  left  shoulder  under  a  summer 
fur.  She  looked  as  if  she  felt  like  a  lioness.  There  was  a 
strange  sense  of  animalism  at  night  in  a  jungle.  A  torch 
of  lightning  blazed  stagily  as  if  powder  had  been  lighted  in 
the  wing  of  a  theater.  Larrick  was  agreeably  shocked,  for  he 
recognized  his  neighbor  of  the  moment  as  Miss  Nancy  Fleet. 

He  had  thought  of  her  so  much  since  she  had  challenged 
him  with  her  comments  on  his  silence  and  his  dancelessness 
that  she  seemed  to  have  followed  him  here  as  if  to  a  tryst 
for  a  duel. 

An  impulse  of  cowboy  impetuosity,  vaquero  vanity,  shook 
him  and  dared  him.  He  lifted  his  hat.  She  scowled,  then 
stared.  An  obliging  lightning  disclosed  him  to  her  and 
flickered  in  her  eyes  and  in  her  smile. 

He  called  out,  "  Howdy,  lady!"  but  she  could  not  hear  him 
through  the  glass.  She  shook  her  head  and  laughed. 

She  might  be  a  Mexican  girl  mocking  him  darkly  through 
a  grilled  window. 

He  thrust  his  hand  into  his  pocket,  pulled  out  a  wadded 
bill — he  hoped  it  was  only  a  dollar,  did  not  care  enough  to 
make  sure;  rather  wanted  the  Cyranic  gesture  of  an  ex- 
travagance— swung  open  the  door,  stepped  out,  reached 
around  the  clock  and  tapped  his  driver  on  the  shoulder, 
shoved  the  bill  into  the  outstretched  hand,  and  slammed  the 
door  after  him. 

Then  he  stepped  on  the  running  board  of  the  other  car. 
Miss  Fleet's  chauffeur,  watching  for  the  green  light  to  give 
way  to  the  red  and  then  to  the  yellow,  had  paid  no  attention 
to  Larrick.  He  threw  off  his  brake  and  let  in  his  clutch  and 
the  car  was  in  motion  when  Larrick  opened  the  door  and  flung 
himself  in  at  Miss  Fleet's  side,  repeating  his  desert  hail  of: 

"Howdy,  lady!" 


CHAPTER  V 

MISS  FLEET  was  not  too  long  out  of  college  to  be  able 
to  say: 

"Who's  all  this?  Leander  just  out  of  the  Hellespont? 
I'm  Hero,  I  suppose." 

Larrick  had  not  the  faintest  idea  what  language  she  was 
talking — French,  probably.  But  he  saw  that  she  was 
laughing  and  that  was  enough.  He  said: 

"Where  I  come  from  we  don't  care  what  you  call  us,  so 
long  as  you  say  it  with  a  smile.  And  you're  wearing  some 
smile,  believe  you  me." 

He  was  rash  enough  to  snuggle  close  at  this  and  she  edged 
off  a  little,  protesting: 

"Get  away,  Fido;  you're  all  wet." 

He  sighed.  "  I'm  lonesomer  than  I  am  wet.  I  must  be 
awful  good,  for  I  was  just  prayin'  for  a  sight  of  you,  and 
here  you  are." 

She  spoke  warningly:  "You  must  be  awful  good  or  I'll 
put  you  out.  Where  are  you  bound  for?  I'll  drop  you 
there." 

"I'm  bound  for  wherever  you're  bound  for,  and  you  can't 
drop  me  at  tall." 

"But  I'm  due  at  Mrs.  Roantree's  for  cards,  and  I'm  late 
at  that." 

"Then  I'll  protect  you  that  far  and  walk  back." 

"Walk  back  in  all  this  rain?" 

"Oh,  Lordy!  honey,  if  you  could  know  how  sweet  this  rain 
sounds  to  me  after  a  year  in  that  extra-dry  desert!  It  hurts 
me  to  see  it  wasted,  though.  It's  just  like  emptying  barrels 
of  champagne  wine  into  a  crick.  The  rain  is  only  a  nuisance 
up  here,  but  down  there — we'd  be  holdin'  our  hats  out  to 
catch  it.  Rain  is  one  of  the  finest  inventions  there  is,  but 
the  distribution  is  mighty  porely  managed,  looks  like  to  me." 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  135 

"  So  you're  from  the  desert,"  she  said.  "  How  fascinating ! 
I  think  I  should  like  it." 

He  proffered  her  the  freedom  of  the  wilderness. 

"Come  along  on  down  and  try.  I'll  give  you  the  key  to 
Texas." 

"Are  you  going  back  soon?" 

"I  wasn't,  but  I  will  in  a  minute  if  you'll  pay  me  a 
visit." 

Nancy  laughed  at  his  impudence.  He  had  the  ingratia- 
tion  of  a  child  whose  slyness  is  too  transparent  to  be  offen- 
sive. She  would  have  slapped  the  face  of  almost  any  other 
man  who  lolled  so  close,  but  Larrick  disarmed  her.  And 
yet  he  was  more  perilous  than  he  seemed;  and  she  also. 

Nancy  (unfortunately  or  fortunately)  was  a  siren  in  spite 
of  herself.  She  had  an  intelligence  so  shrewd  that  it  made 
her  an  intellectual — in  life.  She  read  a  great  deal,  too, 
mainly  fiction  and  memoirs  and  social  scandal,  but  she  was 
wise  in  the  world. 

As  certain  flowers  have  a  color,  a  savor,  a  something  that 
draws  the  fertilizing  insects  and  rewards  them  with  honey 
or  with  death,  so  Nancy  had  a  look,  a  manner,  a  presence, 
that  was  provocative.  Her  parents  had  been  afraid  for  her 
(with  good  reason).  Girls  distrusted  their  lovers  and  wives 
their  husbands  in  her  presence,  with  good  reason;  for  Nancy 
tempted  helplessly  and  not  always  reluctantly. 

She  hated  the  quality  when  it  drew  to  her  adventurers  or 
cads  whom  she  disliked,  and  they  found  that  she  could 
cruelly  rebuke  a  mood  she  had  instilled.  It  humiliated 
her  when  she  saw  men  in  whom  she  wanted  to  inspire  re- 
spect, higher  admiration,  and  comradeship  approaching  her 
in  a  flirtatious  humor.  She  suffered  acutely  and  experienced 
an  almost  ludicrous  yearning  to  be  homely  and  highbrowed 
and  bookish. 

She  welcomed  Larrick  because  she  thought  that  he  would 
be  a  harmless  playmate,  a  denatured  flirt  at  worst.  But 
suddenly  she  found  that  he  had  taken  her  hand  and  was 
fondling  it.  She  was  a  little  amused,  not  at  all  offended, 
and  a  trifle  curious.  She  had  never  met  just  such  a  man. 

By  the  time  rough  outsiders  of  his  sort  had  worked  their 


i36  BEAUTY 

way  to  the  circle  she  moved  in  they  had  grown  old  or  cautious 
or  had  been  polished  and  subdued. 

But  Frewin  had  dragged  this  cowboy  straight  from  the 
saddle  and  flung  him  into  the  drawing-rooms.  Still,  almost 
anybody  who  was  different  was  interesting,  and  Nancy 
had  felt  that  it  would  be  fun  to  play  this  queer  fish  awhile 
before  she  flung  him  back  into  the  sea.  Already  he  had  her 
hand.  He  was  on  the  hook,  and  it  pleased  her  to  give  him  a 
little  more  line  and  see  how  game  a  fish  he  might  be. 

Larrick  was  disconcerted  when  he  found  that  the  heart- 
jolting  courage  he  had  shown  when  he  seized  this  pretty 
lady's  fingers  in  his  was  not  rewarded  with  so  much  as  a 
struggle  or  a  rebuke — not  even  the,  "Why,  Mr.  Larrick!" 
to  say  nothing  of  the,  "How  da'st  you!"  he  had  learned  to 
expect  in  the  town  of  Alpine. 

He  felt  rather  foolish.  He  studied  the  hand  and  wished 
that  he  had  never  picked  it  up.  He  lacked  the  courage  to 
lay  it  down  again. 

He  cast  a  sheepish  glance  toward  Nancy  and  she  seemed 
to  be  watching  him  with  foxy  eyes.  He  was  driven  to  action. 

"Mighty  pirty  hand  for  such  a  little  one,"  he  driveled. 

"Thanks,"  she  said,  a  whit  bored  by  the  stupidity  of  his 
procedure — the  "normalcy"  of  it,  to  use  a  word  the  presi- 
dential candidate,  Senator  Harding,  had  just  given  a  sudden 
advertisement. 

Then,  to  the  amazement  of  both  of  them,  Larrick  lifted 
the  hand  to  his  lips  and  kissed  it.  The  cow-puncher  was  a 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  all  of  a  sudden. 

The  formal  gallantry  was  so  unexpected  to  both  of  them 
that  she  could  no  more  withdraw  her  hand  than  he  could 
release  himself  from  it. 

He  raised  it  again  and  pressed  a  long  kiss  on  its  silken  back. 
There  was  more  fervor  in  this  than  she  had  planned  to  permit, 
and  now  she  tugged  to  withdraw  it. 

But  he  held  her  fast  with  an  iron  grip,  as  he  turned  her 
hand  and  buried  his  lips  into  "the  sweet  and  tender  inward 
of  her  palm."  It  was  like  a  rose  about  his  mouth,  and  he 
caught  a  quick  stab  of  delight.  The  mischievous  banter 
was  already  beautiful  with  romance. 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  137 

"Please!  Please!"  she  said,  a  little  afraid  of  so  abrupt 
a  plunge  into  the  depths. 

"All  right.  I  will,"  he  laughed,  playing  on  her  word  and 
mocking  her  intention  as  he  shoved  his  long  right  arm  back 
of  her,  disarranging  her  elaborate  coiffure.  He  garnered 
her,  flung  her  into  his  bosom,  drew  her  round  so  that  her 
face  was  turned  to  his,  and  kissed  her  full  and  fair. 

She  fought  him  now,  more  in  anger  at  herself  than  him, 
for  she  blamed  herself;  and  more  in  fear  of  herself  than  him, 
for  she  dreaded  the  self  he  was  waking. 

But  her  little  strength  was  as  nothing  to  his  steel-cabled 
arms.  Her  battle  only  gave  them  excuse.  It  was  glorious  to 
have  a  giant's  strength  and  to  use  it  tyrannously.  Her  soul 
was  in  dismay,  but  even  then  she  thought  of  appearances. 
Her  hair  was  caught  on  one  of  his  pearl  shirt  buttons.  A 
bouquet  of  violets  at  her  breast  was  being  crushed.  A  rough 
pearl  pendant  of  her  was  making  a  bruise  that  would  require 
explaining.  She  thought  of  these  things  even  as  she  fainted 
under  the  ruthless  brutality  of  a  kiss  almost  more  of  a  con- 
quest and  discipline  than  of  passion,  a  kiss  that  said,  "Now 
will  you  admit  that  you're  whipped?" 

Larrick  had  kissed  a  hot-headed  Mexican  flirt  that  way 
once  and  had  caught  her  hand  reaching  for  his  revolver. 
When  he  let  go  and  fell  back  she  snatched  a  knife  from  her 
belt  and  slashed  at  him. 

Such  an  assault  on  the  lips  made  a  woman  either  a  wild 
enemy  or  an  abject  slave.  Larrick  was  afraid  to  let  this 
strange  aristocrat  go  till  he  found  out  which  she  would  be. 
As  he  clenched  her,  waiting  for  some  hint  of  her  response, 
he  noted  that  the  car  was  slowing  down  and  stopping  at  the 
curb  under  a  street  lamp. 

He  was  dizzy  with  his  own  ferocity,  but  his  sanity  was 
not  quite  gone.  He  relaxed  his  arms  and  restored  the  girl 
to  her  corner,  stammering: 

"I'm  sorry.     You  kind  of  drove  me  crazy,  honey." 

To  his  stupefaction,  she  spoke  quietly,  not  to  him,  but  to 
the  chauffeur. 

"Robert,  I'll  not  get  out  in  all  this  rain.  Just  drive  me 
home,  please." 


i38  BEAUTY 

The  chauffeur  touched  his  cap  without  turning  his  head. 
The  car  went  on  and,  making  a  wide  circle,  moved  north 
again. 

Larrick  felt  a  new  guilt.     He  whispered: 

"Lawd  a'mighty,  has  that  fella  heard  everything  I've 
said?" 

Miss  Fleet  shook  her  head  with  a  dreary  smile.  She  was 
still  a  bit  giddy  as  she  explained: 

"He  only  heard  me  because  I  pressed  this  button.  It 
connects  the  dictaphone.  He  can't  hear  otherwise." 

Larrick  mopped  his  brow  with  relief.  There  was  a  silence. 
Then  he  seemed  to  feel  that  he  ought  to  resume  the  battle. 
He  reached  for  her  hand. 

She  said:  "No  more  of  that,  I  beg  you.  It  was  all  my 
fault,  I  suppose.  But  I  never  dreamed  you  were  so — 
overpoweringly  sudden." 

"It's  you  that's  that,"  he  answered.  "You  came  over  me 
like  a  cyclone.  You  had  me  locoed.  But  why  didn't  you 
get  out  where  you  were  getting  out?" 

"I  couldn't.  My  hair  must  be  a  sight.  My  gown's  a 
wreck.  It's  easier  to  explain  over  a  telephone." 

"You  could  have  blamed  it  on  me  going  crazy." 

She  laughed  sadly.  "Mrs.  Roantree  would  hardly  have 
been  convinced.  Women  haven't  many  illusions  about 
women." 

Larrick  was  downcast.  "Aw,  that's  tew  bad!  I've 
spoiled  your  evening  and  your  game  of  cards." 

"You'll  have  to  be  very  entertaining  to  make  up  for  it." 

He  was  delighted.  He  put  his  arm  out  to  collect  her  again 
and  renew  the  entertainment.  She  rebuked  him  in  a  tone 
there  was  no  mistaking. 

"I  said  'entertaining,'  not  'impossible.'  What's  the 
desert  like?  I've  never  been  that  far  West." 

"Well,  I  swore  I  never  wanted  to  see  it  again,  but  the  jail- 
bird gets  homesick  for  the  penitentiary,  they  say,  and  when 
I'm  all  by  myself  in  the  hotel  or  feelin'  lonely  in  the  crowd 
on  Fifth  Avenue  I  find  I'm  hankerin'  for  a  good  hoss  between 
my  knees  and  the  old  sagebrush  all  around.  There's  not 
enough  room  up  here.  The  sky  is  just  slices.  I'm  used  to 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  139 

the  whole  thing  the  whole  time.  Besides,  I  can't  get  used 
to  so  much  walkin'  and  automobilin' !  I  was  brung  up  in  the 
saddle.  Do  you  ride?" 

"Yes.  I  was  brung  up  in  the  saddle,  too.  I  was  nearly 
born  there.  Mother  got  home  just  in  time.  I've  ridden 
to  the  hounds  ever  since  I  was  able  to  sit  a  pony.  I  love  it." 

"I'd  admire  to  ride  with  you  sometime." 

"Let's  get  a  couple  of  horses  at  Durland's  and  go  round 
the  Park.  My  own  horses  are  in  the  country." 

"No,  thank  you,"  he  said.  "I'd  make  a  holy  show  of 
maseff  in  the  Park.  I've  seen  those  swells  doin'  the  merry- 
go-round  on  those  liver-pad  saddles  and  risin'  and  fallin* 
like  they  were  in  the  'Piscopalian  Church.  But  I  don't 
belong.  I  hate  a  trottin'  hoss  like  I  don't  hate  a  rattlesnake. 
You  come  along  on  down  into  the  desert  and  you'll  think 
you're  ridin'  in  a  limousine.  Our  hosses,  when  they're  not 
buckin',  skim  along  as  easy  as  this  car." 

"What's  the  desert  like?" 

"Well,  it's  hell  in  the  sunlight,  of  course.  It  kind  of  cooks 
you.  But  at  night,  when  it's  so  cold  you  want  to  light  a  fire 
and  the  smoke  goes  straight  up  and  somebody  lets  the  stars 
down  on  strings  and  the  coyotes  are  the  choir  and — oh,  I 
don't  know — it  kind  of  gets  you.  I  used  to  be  almighty 
lonesome  sometimes;  used  to  keep  maseff  company  some- 
times by  imagining  there  was  a  girl  sittin'  crosslegged  on  a 
blanket  by  the  fire  and  me  rollin'  a  cig'rette  with  one  hand 
and  holdin'  on  to  her  with  the  other." 

"Was  she  a  purely  imaginary  girl?" 

"Always." 

"  It  sounds  wonderful.  Roll  me  a  cigarette  with  one  hand, 
won't  you?" 

"  And  the  other  holdin'  on  to  you?"  he  ventured. 

"Is  that  absolutely  necessary?" 

"Yep." 

He  was  in  such  a  comradely  spirit  now  that  she  had  no 
misgivings. 

He  whipped  out  the  makings,  which  he  always  kept  at 
hand,  sifted  the  tobacco  into  the  paper,  put  up  the  sack, 
and  then  thrust  his  right  arm  out  for  her. 
10 


i4o  BEAUTY 

She  flung  back  and  the  tobacco  was  shaken  to  the  floor. 

"Aw!"  he  began.  She  laughed  as  at  a  child,  and  bent 
her  neck  to  the  yoke  of  his  arm.  A  flare  of  lightning  made  a 
long  stay,  and  she  watched  the  deft  business  of  his  fingers, 
while  his  left  hand,  with  a  kind  of  autonomy,  achieved  a 
perfect  result. 

"You  smokin'  this?"  he  said. 

"Yep." 

"Then  you  seal  it  up." 

He  held  it  to  her  lips  and  she  ran  her  tongue  along  the 
free  edge  of  the  paper.  Then  he  handed  it  to  her,  got  out  his 
pouch  and  paper  again,  and  made  himself  a  cigarette  while 
he  held  a  lighted  match  to  hers  and  caught  a  light  for  him- 
self just  as  the  flame  reached  the  end  of  the  wood. 

She  drew  in  a  long  smokeful  breath  and  exhaled  it  on  a 
cozy  murmur. 

"And  now  that  we're  in  the  desert,  what  are  you  going  to 
say  to  me  to  pass  the  long  evening?" 

"  I  won't  need  to  say  anything.     Just — " 

He  drew  her  to  him  so  sharply  that  she  choked  on  her 
smoke  and  fought  away  from  him. 

"A  little  of  that  desert  goes  a  long  way." 

He  would  not  release  her,  but  she  was  out  of  the  mood. 
The  lack  of  dignity,  to  say  nothing  of  the  mad  folly  of  it, 
offended  her  common  sense.  She  put  her  hand  over  the 
button  in  the  wall  of  the  limousine  and  said : 

"Do  you  want  Robert  to  hear  the  rest  of  this?" 

It  was  a  more  effective  weapon  than  a  pistol  would  have 
been.  He  put  his  hands  up  in  surrender.  She  sighed: 

"I'm  afraid  the  desert  is  not  for  me.  I'm  afraid  I'd  grow 
restless.  New  York  bores  me  to  death  as  it  is.  What 
would  I  do  with  nothing  but  sagebrush?" 

He  spoke  very  earnestly: 

"Wouldn't  love  make  any  difference?" 

"It  never  has  made  much  with  me." 

"You  been  in  love  before?" 

"Always.     Haven't  you?" 

"Well,  not  really.    I've  thought  I  was,  but  I  wasn't." 

"Isn't  that  what  everybody  says?" 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  141 

"But  there  comes  a  real  love  finally,  don't  you  think?" 
He  said  it  anxiously,  like  a  child  afraid  of  the  dark. 

"I'd  like  to  think  so!"  she  sighed.  "I  suppose  we've  got 
to  go  on  thinking  so.  But —  Well,  here's  my  home. 
Good  night." 

"My  God!    You're  not  leavin'  me  like  this?" 

She  laughed  at  the  desperate  sincerity  of  the  compliment. 

"We  can't  sit  out  here  in  the  car.  And  I  don't  suppose 
you'd  come  in?" 

She  really  did  not  suppose  that  he  would.  But  he  did  not 
know  enough  to  understand  the  rebuff  in  the  invitation. 
He  said: 

"Sure  will  I." 

Before  she  could  protest,  he  had  opened  the  door,  backed 
out,  and  was  rushing  her  through  the  light  shower. 


CHAPTER  VT 

NANCY  was  furious  with  him,  not  because  the  dash 
through  the  rain  had  spotted  and  ruined  her  gown  of 
vast  price,  but  because  he  was  putting  her  at  the  mercy  of 
her  servants. 

In  the  car  she  had  realized  in  fitful  flashes  of  reason  across 
the  dark  sky  of  flirtation  that  her  chauffeur  was  fully  aware 
of  the  fact  that  some  man  had  stepped  into  her  car.  He 
might  have  caught  sinister  reflections  from  the  glass  of  the 
windshield  or  from  the  mirror  in  front  of  the  goings-on 
inside. 

She  almost  swooned  now  with  shame  at  the  thought  of 
what  such  glimpses  and  suspicions  would  mean  to  her 
chauffeur,  and  of  what  stories  he  would  tell  the  rest  of  the 
servants,  and  they  the  whole  town. 

This  was  not  the  first  time  she  had  run  such  risks  and  been 
talked  about.  She  had  even  been  told  about  being  talked 
about,  and  had  curdled  with  wrath  at  herself. 

But  when  a  chance  to  flirt  arrived  she  almost  always  lost 
her  common  sense.  She  grew  as  helpless  as  a  leaf  in  an  eddy, 
and  if  she  floated  out  it  was  rather  to  the  current's  credit 
than  her  own.  She  had  not  always  floated  out. 

But  she  had  kept  her  head  up  with  all  the  more  haughti- 
ness and  had  trampled  the  gossip  under.  She  felt  herself  a 
bluffing  hypocrite,  but  she  despised  her  critics  too  well  to 
let  them  wreck  her  life.  In  her  conscience,  though,  she 
found  her  private  hell. 

She  was  enraged  at  Larrick  now,  and  would  have  dismissed 
him  if  she  had  known  how.  The  only  thing  that  saved  him 
from  having  the  door  slammed  in  his  face  was  that  a  servant 
opened  it,  and  Nancy  would  not  give  him  the  luxury  of  seeing 
her  snub  a  cavalier. 

So  she  marched  in  and  Larrick  followed.     He  was  so 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  143 

startled  by  the  splendor  of  the  hall  that  the  servant  had 
some  difficulty  in  extracting  his  hat  from  his  hand. 

Larrick  had  never  entered  a  palace,  and  the  Fleet  home 
was  one  of  the  show  places  of  New  York.  Larrick  had  not 
the  faintest  idea  of  the  period  or  plan  of  its  architecture. 
(And  neither  have  I.  Such  details  must  be  left  to  the 
interior-decorator  novelists  who  rival  the  auction  catalogues 
in  their  gorgeous  particulars.) 

Larrick  found  himself  in  a  somberly  majestic  space  as  awe- 
inspiring  as  a  cathedral  nave  (if  he  had  ever  been  in  a 
cathedral  nave).  Lights  smoldered  on  carved  things,  on 
moldings  and  capitals  and  on  column  shafts,  on  rugs  and 
consols  and  a  marble  floor.  And  an  imperial  stairway 
worthy  of  ambassadors  and  royalty  marched  away  to  un- 
seen magnificences. 

Nancy  flung  off  her  thin  wrap,  unpinned  and  tossed  aside 
her  crumpled  violets,  and  paused  before  a  mirror  (which 
Larrick  had  supposed  to  be  another  room)  to  rearrange  her 
distressed  hair.  For  the  sake  of  the  second  man  she  said 
to  Larrick: 

"I'm  almost  blown  to  pieces  with  the  wind." 

If  the  second  man  realized  that  it  was  not  the  wind  he  did 
not  correct  her. 

Nancy  walked  from  the  hall  with  a  carelessness  that 
stunned  Larrick,  into  a  drawing-room  that  was  even  more 
overpowering  than  the  hall.  She  motioned  him  to  sit  down 
on  a  chair  that  seemed  to  have  been  made  for  the  Kaiser 
in  full  uniform. 

As  if  the  room  were  not  crushing  enough  to  have  pre- 
vented Larrick  from  any  attempt  at  love-making,  there 
was  an  old  gentleman  asleep  in  a  chair  at  a  remarkable  table 
in  the  next  room. 

Larrick  felt  that  he  had  happened  upon  King  Lear  taking 
a  nap,  and  he  would  not  have  been  surprised  if  Nancy  had 
knelt  and  addressed  him  in  blank  verse  with  a  "Hail,  parent 
revered!"  Instead,  she  went  up  to  him  and  kissed  his  bald 
crown  and  said: 

"Dad,  you  poor  old  thing,  get  up  and  go  to  bed.  You'll 
catch  your  death." 


144  BEAUTY 

King  Lear  snorted  and  started  and  rose  dizzily  with  a 
sheepish  smile. 

"Hello,  baby!  I  was  waiting  up  for  you.  Your  cousin 
Louise  has  been  telephoning  every  few  minutes.  She  is  in 
great  trouble  and  wants  to  come  over  to  see  you  the  moment 
you're  home,  however  late.  You  are  home,  aren't  you? 
Or  are  you  on  your  way  out  again?" 

"I'll  call  her  up  in  the  morning." 

"She's  most  anxious.  She  wouldn't  tell  your  mother  or 
me  why.  But  she  was  crying.  You'd  better  see  her." 

"All  right." 

She  sighed,  went  to  the  wall,  pressed  a  button,  and  asked 
the  man  who  appeared  to  call  up  Mrs.  Coykendall  and  say 
that  Miss  Fleet  was  at  home  now  and  would  be  delighted 
to  see  her. 

She  rejoined  Larrick,  who  stood  awkward  and  uncertain. 
She  motioned  him  to  a  chair  and  he  sat  down,  for  lack  of 
brains  to  decline. 

"My  cousin  is  coming  over,"  she  explained. 

"I'd  better  be  moving  on,  then,"  he  faltered. 

"Oh,  she  can't  get  here  for  some  time.  Do  wait.  Roll 
me  another  cigarette,  won't  you?  I  wonder  what  ails  the 
poor  girl  now.  She's  the  champion  trouble  connoisseur  of 
the  world.  And  it's  real  trouble,  too.  She —  You  saw  her 
at  the  Ritz  the  other  night,  I  imagine.  Did  you  notice  a 
woman  with  her  face  veiled?" 

Larrick  nodded  eagerly,  as  if  he  wanted  to  hear  more. 

Nancy  reached  for  the  cigarette  he  had  finished  by  now, 
took  a  light,  and  walked  out  of  the  room,  followed  by  a  trail 
of  smoke.  She  told  her  father  to  go  to  bed  for  Heaven's 
sake,  and  kissed  him  and  started  him  toward  the  door. 
She  returned  with  a  large  photograph  in  a  silver  frame, 
sat  on  a  divan,  and  motioned  Larrick  to  her  side. 

"That's  Louise,"  she  said,  indicating  the  photograph. 

Larrick  studied  the  woman,  who  seemed  to  study  him, 
her  great  eyes  half  curtained  by  half-lowered  eyelids.  She 
had  race  and  the  pride  of  it;  beauty  in  its  ripeness,  mellow 
a  little,  as  if  it  were  nearer  August  than  June,  but  luscious 
still. 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  145 

"All  you  people  are  beautiful,"  was  Larrick's  comment. 
The  tribute  that  included  her  with  an  unconscious  grace 
pleased  her  more  than  a  specific  compliment.  He  went  on, 
"But  I  don't  see  why  she  hides  a  face  like  that  in  a  veil." 

"It  didn't  suit  her.  It  couldn't  hold  her  husband. 
Nothing  could  hold  Roy  Coykendall.  Nobody  ever  did. 
But  the  poor  dear  fool  tried  to  improve  on  her  face.  Look 
close  and  you'll  see  two  lines  between  her  brows,  little  crow's 
feet  at  the  end  of  her  eyes.  See  those  furrows  from  her  nose 
to  her  mouth;  that  fullness  under  the  chin;  that  little 
pouchiness  at  the  jaw;  those  wrinkles  in  her  neck.  Well — 
You  say  she's  beautiful,  and  she  is — she  was.  But  she 
doesn't  look  like  a  pretty  young  girl,  now  does  she?  She 
hasn't  any  right  to,  of  course.  She's  lived  and  loved  and 
been  loved  and  had  and  lost  a  few  babies  and  a  broken 
heart  and  other  luxuries  that  young  girls  are  denied. 

"But  a  woman  never  forgives  herself  for  her  years.  You 
can't  console  her  for  the  loss  of  youth.  Having  been 
beautiful  makes  it  all  the  bitterer  to  grow  old.  There  was 
no  help  for  it,  though,  and  women  used  to  take  their  medicine 
as  pluckily  as  they  could. 

"Then  these  plastic  surgeons  came  along  and  began  to 
perform  miracles.  They  erased  wrinkles,  lifted  fallen  chins, 
remodeled  noses  and  mouths.  Several  actresses  and  actors 
turned  time  backward  ten  or  twenty  years  at  a  jump. 
And,  as  usual,  everybody  tried  to  copy  the  actresses  and 
actors. 

"During  the  war  the  surgeons  saved  any  number  of  poor 
soldiers  from  wearing  masks.  They  built  faces  where  there 
was  nothing  left  but  shapeless  wounds  and  horror.  They 
learned  a  lot  that  way. 

"And  now  they've  got  most  of  the  women  crazy.  I  IOIQW 
several  of  them  who  have  gone  through  the  mill  and  been 
ironed  out  wonderfully.  I'll  probably  take  a  chance  myself 
one  of  these  days." 

"Is  it  safe?"  Larrick  mumbled. 

"No.  It's  frightfully  risky.  That  makes  it  all  the  more 
fascinating,  of  course.  The  pain  is  something  terrific. 
That  also  increases  the  charm.  There's  something  about 


'i46  BEAUTY 

a  sharp  knife  and  pain  that  attracts  most  women,  somehow. 
They  just  love  to  be  cut  up — and  to  hurt. 

"Well,  poor  Louise  began  to  brood.  She  said  she  owed 
it  to  herself  and  to  her  husband  to  get  rid  of  her  wrinkles. 
As  if  any  husband  who  really  loved  a  woman  wouldn't  love 
her  the  better  for  every  wrinkle  their  years  together  brought 
upon  her.  I  tried  to  dissuade  her.  I  told  her  her  husband 
was  no  good,  anyway;  that  he  couldn't  be  true  even  to  the 
same  chorus  girl  for  a  whole  season.  But  she  just  vanished 
— left  word  she'd  gone  on  a  visit. 

"  One  day  she  sent  for  me.  She  was  in  a  private  hospital. 
Her  face  was  slashed  all  to  pieces.  It  was  cross-patched  all 
over  with  strips  of  adhesive  tape.  The  scars  wouldn't  heal. 
There  were  infections  along  the  edges  of  some  of  the  cuts — 
loathsome  surfaces.  I  was  sickened  at  the  sight  of  her. 
I  almost  fainted.  I  pulled  myself  together  and  asked  her 
what  in  God's  name  had  happened  to  her.  I  thought  she'd 
been  thrown  through  the  windshield  of  an  automobile. 

"She  said:  'I've  had  my  face  made  over.  I  had  every- 
thing done.  And  nothing  has  succeeded.  I've  sent  for 
you  to  ask  you  to  do  me  a  few  last  favors,  and  to  take  some 
messages  to  my  babies,  for,  of  course,  I  can  never  see  them 
again.  Of  course  I'm  going  to  kill  myself.' 

"  Did  you  ever  wrestle  with  anybody  who  wanted  to  com- 
mit suicide  and  had  a  good  right  to?  No?  Well,  you're 
lucky.  It's  not  much  fun. 

"  I  fought  that  poor,  poor  creature  to  a  standstill.  Finally, 
to  get  rid  of  me,  she  promised  she'd  live.  Sometimes  I  think 
I  did  the  wrong  thing  by  her.  But — well,  that's  Louise. 
She  can't  stay  at  home.  She  goes  mad  with  loneliness. 
Her  husband  neglected  her  when  she  looked  like  this  photo- 
graph. She  goes  about  in  a — you  saw  her  in  her  thick  veil. 
She  has  a  beautiful  body,  a  big  heart,  a  fine  mind — and  no 
face. 

"She's  not  the  only  victim.  Every  now  and  then  I  read 
in  the  paper  of  some  actress  who  has  sued  one  of  these  sur- 
geons for  ten  thousand  or  fifty  thousand  dollars'  damages 
for  the  ruination  of  her  features.  But  that  doesn't  stop 
the  rush. 


MRS.    COYKENDALL 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  147 

"Louise  lives  a  living  death.  And  now  she's  in  some  new 
trouble,  God  help  her.  What  can  it  be?" 

She  put  the  photograph  down  and  clenched  her  hands, 
wringing  them  in  pity.  She  understood  the  lust  for  beauty 
and  she  could  imagine  the  anguish  of  its  loss.  She  could 
foresee  it  in  her  own  destiny.  It  was  the  tragedy  of  all 
tragedies  to  her. 

For  the  first  time  Larrick  saw  her  in  a  mood  of  sorrow, 
and  there  is  no  beauty  quite  like  the  heavenly  beauty  of 
sympathy  for  another's  woe. 

Larrick  felt  a  new  pang  in  his  heart.  His  hand  went  out 
to  her  writhing  fingers  and  clasped  them.  She  lifted  her 
head  and  looked  into  his  eyes  with  the  longing  of  a  wounded 
hound.  She  wanted  some  protection  from  the  hideous 
cruelties  of  the  world. 

He  could  think  of  only  one  way  to  pledge  himself  to  fellow- 
ship in  her  suffering.  He  bent  his  head  and  kissed  her 
trembling  lips  with  a  kind  of  priestly  solemnity. 

But  it  did  not  look  priestly  to  the  servant  who  had  gone 
to  the  door  unnoticed  and  who  now  looked  in  to  say : 

"Mrs.  Coykendall  is  here,  if  you  please." 

He  fell  back,  and  Nancy,  in  a  tumult  of  wrath  and  con- 
fusion at  being  delivered  once  more  to  downstairs  comment, 
leaped  to  her  feet  and  ran  out  to  meet  her  cousin. 

Larrick,  doubly  trapped,  stood  up  and  wondered  how  to 
escape. 

He  could  not  help  overhearing  what  Mrs.  Coykendall  was 
gasping  to  Nancy  in  the  hall.  She  had  evidently  held  her 
emotions  back  till  they  could  no  longer  be  controlled  even 
by  the  habit  of  discretion.  Nancy  tried  vainly  to  hush  her, 
but  her  shrill  whispers  cut  the  air. 

"Oh,  Nancy,  Nancy,  Roy  is  going  to  sue  me  for 
divorce." 

"Sue  you!    How  can  he?" 

"Oh,  he  has  evidence  enough.'* 

"Evidence!    Louise!    You  couldn't! — you  haven't — " 

"Oh  no.  I'm  innocent — all  too  innocent;  but  nobody 
would  believe  it  in  the  face  of  the  proof  he  has.  It  would 
convince  any  jury.  What  am  I  going  to  do  now?  Why 


X48  BEAUTY 

wouldn't  you  let  me  die  when  I  wanted  to?  What  am  I 
going  to  do  now?" 

Larrick  heard  Nancy  murmur,  "Louise,  darling,  I'm  not 
alone." 

But  the  frantic  victim  of  too  many  sorrows  railed  at  cau- 
tion: "What  difference  does  it  make  who  hears  me?  Won't 
it  be  in  all  the  papers?" 

"Come  up  to  my  room,  dearest,  and  tell  me  all  about  it. 
You'll  stay  here  to-night." 

Larrick  heard  them  moving  along  the  hall.  As  they 
passed  the  door  he  saw  Nancy  glancing  across  her  cousin's 
shoulder  and  forming  the  words  "Good  night"  with  her  lips. 

She  did  not  run  back  to  ask  him  to  keep  the  secret  he 
had  stumbled  on.  He  was  glad  of  that.  He  paused  a 
moment,  then  stole  into  the  hall,  found  his  hat,  and  let 
himself  out  at  the  great  door. 

His  farewell  glance  at  the  superb  chamber  whose  nobility 
had  so  humbled  him  when  he  entered  it  caught  the  figure 
of  the  two  sad  figures  climbing  the  palace  steps. 

All  this  wealth  so  royally  squandered  had  not  built  a 
citadel  strong  enough  to  keep  out  poverty  or  terror  or  dis- 
grace. There  was  something  Grecian  in  the  slow  ascent 
of  the  tall  woman  in  black  who  rested  her  muffled  head  on 
Nancy's  shoulder.  Nancy  was  yet  taller  and  her  long,  bare 
arm  went  about  her  cousin's  shaken  form  to  help  and  sup- 
port her  like  an  arm  of  marble. 

And  after  her  followed  a  coquettish  little  satin  train, 
ending  in  a  tassel  that  sprawled  and  caught  on  every  step, 
flaunting  its  golden  fringes  mockingly  at  the  heels  of  dismay, 
and  seeming  to  tinkle  inaudibly. 

Larrick  found  that  it  was  raining  hard  again  outside, 
and  he  was  glad  of  that. 


CHAPTER  VII 

"  T  JE  has  evidence  enough. . . .  But  I'm  all  too  innocent." 

ll  These  two  phrases  played  seesaw  in  Larrick's  brain 
as  he  strode  through  a  downpour  that  turned  the  canon 
of  Fifth  Avenue  into  a  vast  shower  bath  several  miles  long. 

To  Larrick  alone  it  had  the  invigoration,  the  ecstasy  of  a 
shower  bath.  His  desert-tanned  hide,  his  desiccated  soul, 
rejoiced  in  the  squandered  floods.  There  were  no  fields  here 
to  drink  the  rain  with  welcome,  no  trees  to  hold  out  their 
countless  palms  for  largess.  Along  the  whole  street  there 
was  not  a  front  or  a  side  yard  such  as  the  poorest  homes  in 
Texas  made  no  boast  of.  These  grassless  palaces  were 
drawn  up  shoulder  to  shoulder,  aligned  along  the  street 
like  drenched  soldiers  parading  in  a  storm. 

The  rain  slashed  down  from  the  murk  sky  in  bias  streaks; 
it  beat  off  from  the  walls  of  the  houses ;  it  caromed  from  the 
stoops;  it  shot  up  in  an  echo  rain  from  the  pavements. 
The  teeming  gutters  carried  it  to  holes,  where  it  went  in 
swirling  and  vanished  by  long  subterrranean  channels  to  the 
river. 

Waste,  waste,  waste!  of  life-giving  waters,  while  millions 
of  square  miles  of  desert  lay  in  a  purgatory  of  drought. 

And  of  love,  it  seemed  to  Larrick,  there  was  the  same  mad 
waste.  Love,  the  life  -  giver,  the  life  -  sustainer,  the  life- 
justifier,  rained  where  it  was  not  needed  and  flowed  away 
into  the  dark,  back  to  the  river  and  the  sea,  while  millions 
of  men  and  women  thirsted  for  it  in  vain. 

This  Mrs.  Coykendall  rained  her  love  on  the  asphalt  soul 
of  her  husband  and  it  gave  him  only  annoyance.  And, 
meanwhile,  she  who  wasted  so  much  love  parched  for  the 
lack  of  it. 

Larrick  wondered  what  kind  of  man  Coykendall  must  be 
that  a  woman  should  love  him  so  desperately?  To  forgive 


iSo  BEAUTY 

his  disloyalty  once  was  a  proof  of  strong  devotion;  to  for- 
give it  again  and  again  was  mania.  Mrs.  Coykendall  had 
been  born  rich.  She  had  always  had  all  that  wealth  gave, 
and  yet  she  was  a  whimpering  beggar  for  love.  And  finally 
she  gave  her  face  to  the  knives  and  the  needles  of  a  torturer 
that  she  might  renew  herself  for  her  indifferent  husband. 
That  was  hardly  less  than  the  Hindu  women  had  done  who 
climbed  their  husbands'  funeral  pyres  to  keep  them  company 
in  the  grave — and  to  keep  other  women  away. 

Larrick  marveled  at  the  strange  insanity  called  love. 
Some  men  and  women  drew  it  as  the  moon  the  tides,  the 
sun  the  dew.  Other  men  and  women  were  lucky  if  they 
could  by  hunting  and  pleading  discover  some  one  willing 
to  be  loved  and  to  return  a  little  affection  in  payment  for  a 
life  of  service.  And  some  men  and  women  besought  love 
as  vainly  as  the  desert  pleaded  for  rain  upon  its  gaunt 
bosom. 

He  had  known  Texas  people  to  pray  for  rain  and  wait  for 
rain  for  over  a  year  and  never  see  a  cloud  in  the  sky  except 
now  and  then  some  flimsy  vapor  that  stayed  just  long 
enough  to  make  a  fool  of  hope. 

He  had  known  the  cattle  to  die  by  the  hundred  till  the 
survivors  had  to  be  loaded  on  trains  and  shipped  north  to 
water.  He  had  seen  cornfields  shriveled  in  vast  areas  of 
rusty  jungle.  He  had  known  the  earth  to  dry  to  such  pow- 
der that,  as  Col.  Will  G.  Sterett  wrote,  the  insects  perished 
and  the  field  mice  starved. 

And  all  this  while  there  were  cloudbursts  and  floods 
wreaking  vengeance  in  other  lands. 

And  love  was  like  that.  Larrick  had  never  thought  much 
about  it  till  now  when  he  went  striding  down  Fifth  Avenue, 
his  first  and  only  evening  clothes  saturated  with  pounding 
rain,  his  patent-leather  shoes  squeaking  with  the  pools 
inside.  He  was  remembering  how  he  had  sometimes  rasped 
his  filelike  tongue  along  his  cracked  lips  and  stared  with 
bleary  eyes  at  some  dried-out  water  hole  he  had  struggled 
to  across  the  scorching  sand. 

It  never  rains  but  it  pours.  He  had  met  up  with  Nancy 
Fleet  in  the  rain,  and  he  had  tasted  her  lips,  had  been  invited 


MISS   NANCY    FLEET  151 

into  her  home  and  kissed  her  again — only  to  have  his  feast 
interrupted  by  the  specter  of  Mrs.  Coykendall  with  her  wild 
story  of  a  husband  that  not  only  betrayed  her,  but  trapped 
her  in  her  own  folly  and  threatened  her  with  public  shame. 

What  could  she  have  meant  by  saying  that  he  had  "evi- 
dence enough"?  How  could  he  have  "evidence"  if  she 
were  "innocent,"  as  she  said — "all  too  innocent,"  as  she  had 
sobbed? 

That  was  the  last  word  in  degradation.  The  poor  thing 
had  fallen  so  low  that  she  was  ashamed  of  her  loyalty  and 
her  decency  and  her  innocence,  because  they  had  been  so 
indecently  rewarded. 

Larrick's  heart  was  an  unfailing  spring  of  sympathy. 
He  heard  a  woman  weeping.  That  was  enough.  She  was 
all  right.  She  wouldn't  cry  just  for  the  fun  of  it.  His 
heart  ached  with  pity  and  his  head  with  curiosity. 

What  could  Coykendall  be  like?  He  wanted  to  lay  eyes 
on  that  fellow — lays  hands  on  him,  too.  But  what  could  he 
belike? 

When  he  came  to  know  him  afterward,  Larrick  realized  all 
too  well  that  most  idols  are  beautiful  only  to  their  worshipers. 
It  is  the  infatuation  that  lends  them  their  enchantment,  as  the 
desert  twilight  covers  the  most  hideous  foothills  with  majesty. 
The  idolater  puts  the  jewels  about  the  ugly  idol's  neck,  lays 
flowers  in  its  stolid  hands,  and  burns  the  expensive  incense 
that  comes  back,  unrecognized,  as  the  idol's  own  sweet  breath. 

When  Larrick  came  to  know  Coykendall  he  found  him  an 
idolater  at  the  shrine  of  Clelia  Blakeney,  who  paid  no  more 
heed  to  his  prayers  than  he  pai'd  to  his  wife's.  The  lesser  god 
was  looking  over  the  head  of  the  worshiper  toward  a  higher 
goddess,  who  ignored  him.  But  that  gave  Mrs.  Coykendall  no 
comfort.  She  wanted  love,  not  revenge.  She  had  gambled 
even  with  her  beauty,  and  lost  that,  too! 

But  that  was  for  the  future  when  Larrick  was  looking  back 
upon  it  in  the  Adirondacks  as  his  past. 

On  that  night  of  deluge  the  rain  seemed  to  enliven  Lar- 
rick's sensibilities  beyond  themselves,  as  rain  alone  is 
capable  of  doing  for  all  the  plants  and  animals  and  men 
it  falls  upon. 


iS2  BEAUTY 

Fifth  Avenue  had  always  been  a  word  to  him  like  Babylon 
or  Samarcand.  But  now  it  was  almost  abandoned,  a  dead 
road  in  a  deserted  mining  town.  So  few  people  were 
to  be  seen,  and  they  fleeing  in  cabs  as  from  a  plague  or 
darting  from  shelter  to  shelter  like  thieves,  that  he  said  to 
himself: 

"I  could  just  about  steal  the  whole  blamed  street  if  I'd 
a  mind  to." 

But  as  he  slashed  south  he  passed  more  and  more  shops, 
their  windows  idly  alight  overtime  for  the  advertisement 
of, the  wares  within.  After  a  mile  or  so  he  turned  into 
Thirty-fourth  Street  and  entered  the  Waldorf,  leaving  a 
dripping  trail  as  he  went  down  the  lobby,  and  wet  foot- 
prints on  the  tiles  and  the  rugs.  In  the  mirrorful  elevator 
a  few  women  looked  at  him  with  dread  lest  his  soppiness 
should  smirch  their  fabrics.  They  drew  their  finery  about 
them  closer.  But  he  felt  wonderfully  elate  to  be  too  wet, 
for  once. 

In  his  room  he  peeled  off  his  togs,  wrung  them  out  in  the 
bathtub,  and  sent  the  suit  to  the  valet.  Then  he  drew  on 
his  silk  pajamas  (they  had  cost  him  twenty-seven  dollars) 
and  slipped  into  an  almost  too  exquisite  brocaded  silk  bath- 
robe that  he  had  been  unable  to  resist  (though  he  had  almost 
toppled  over  when  the  haberdasher  told  him  the  price  was 
eighty  dollars). 

He  shoved  his  big  feet  into  enormous  slippers  of  limp  mo- 
rocco and  stared  at  his  bed,  whose  covers  a  maid  had  al- 
ready folded  back  with  fine  exactitude.  The  white  spread 
had  a  pattern  in  white,  a  carefully  designed  device  to  give 
it  a  little  quiet  beauty.  Beauty  was  remembered  and 
attempted  in  the  blankets.  In  the  lace  curtains  creamy 
figures  filled  a  creamy  mesh.  The  very  bath  mat  showed 
a  Greek  fret.  The  towels,  the  faucets,  the  electric  fixtures, 
the  door  knobs — everything  from  the  trodden  rugs  to  the 
paneled  ceilings  revealed  an  effort  at  grace. 

He  had  to  laugh  at  the  image  he  caught  of  himself  in  the 
door-long  mirror.  He  had  hitherto  considered  that  the  only 
really  essential  preparation  for  sleep  was  the  removal  of  his 
spurs.  More  came  off  if  he  had  the  time  or  the  bed,  but  he 


M7S5   NANCY   FLEET  153 

practically  never  slept  with  his  spurs  on.  Now  he  had 
to  dress  up  almost  as  much  to  go  to  bed  as  to  get  up. 

He  dubbed  the  reflection  in  the  glass  a  "gawdam  dewd," 
but  the  reflection  did  not  resent  it.  It  grinned.  Then  he 
hunted  for  the  Durham  pouch  and  the  rice-paper  brochure 
and  rolled  himself  a  cigarette. 

This  reminded  him  of  Nancy  Fleet,  whom  he  had  almost 
forgotten  except  as  the  satellite  of  the  tragic  Mrs.  Coyken- 
dall.  Now  he  forgot  Mrs.  Coykendall  and  thought  of  the 
luscious  armful  Nancy  made.  He  exulted  in  the  fairy  story 
he  had  written  for  himself  in  a  few  weeks;  his  amazing  vein 
of  luck  had  included  not  only  wealth  and  the  acquaintance 
with  people  of  wealth,  but  even  a  brilliant  conquest  of  one 
of  the  beautiful  daughters  of  wealth. 

He  had  shot  up  into  the  sky  from  the  depths  of  obscurity, 
as  if  one  of  those  extinct  Texan  volcanoes  of  Brewster  County 
had  suddenly  wakened  beneath  him  and  skyrocketed  him 
to  the  clouds. 

He  could  almost  smell  the  sulphur.  He  supposed  that 
before  long  he  would  come  down  like  the  rocket  stick 
and  thereafter  lie  as  dull  and  dismal  as  the  rugged  lava 
patches  that  made  iron  islands  and  peninsulas  in  the  sand 
sea. 

But  now  he  was  going  up,  up,  up,  in  a  blaze  of  glory  and 
he  was  immensely  pleased  with  the  view.  Better  to  have 
soared  and  flopped  than  never  to  have  hit  the  sky. 

He  smoked  many  cigarettes,  imagining  Miss  Fleet  at  his 
side  praising  his  dexterity,  or  rather  his  sinisterity,  since  he 
rolled  them  with  his  left  hand. 

He  decided  that  he  would  have  to  teach  her  how  to  roll 
her  own.  It  would  be  a  ladylike  accomplishment  in  these 
days  when  nearly  all  the  city  women  seemed  to  be  going 
mad  over  cigarettes.  As  he  had  said  to  Frewin  in  a  Will 
Rogersy  phrase: 

"I  see  where  it  says  in  the  paper  that  women  in  England 
are  takin'  to  pipes — little  ladylike  pipes.  I  reckon  befo' 
long  they'll  move  on  to  chewin'  tobacca — perfumed,  most 
like,  or  flavored  with  pep'mint  or  somethin'." 

There  was  much  ado  about  women  and  tobacco  and  it  was 


i54  BEAUTY 

generally  denounced  as  a  new  and  virtue-destroying  vice, 
though  it  had  not  yet  returned  to  the  favor  it  enjoyed  in  the 
seventeenth  century  when  children  were  sent  to  school  with 
pipes  in  their  satchels  and  the  schoolmaster  taught  the 
neophyte  the  art.  In  pious  Scotland  in  1791  it  was  said, 
"There  is  scarce  a  young  woman  by  the  time  she  has  been 
taught  to  spin,  but  has  also  learned  to  smoke." 

But  what  could  the  poor  preachers  do  if  they  were  for- 
bidden to  call  old  vices  new? 

Larrick's  delight  in  the  prospect  of  teaching  Miss  Fleet 
the  high  art  of  cigarette  making  was  hampered  by  a  dread 
that  she  might  carry  out  her  threat  of  making  him  ride  a 
trottin'  hoss.  She  had  ridden  to  the  hounds,  too,  she  said, 
and,  as  he  had  heard  tell,  that  included  jumpin'  stone 
fences.  He  had  stuck  to  all  sorts  of  jumping-jack  bronchos, 
but  none  of  them  had  ever  leaped  a  bob-war  fence  with  him. 
He  shuddered  at  what  would  happen  to  him  if  they  ever 
put  him  aboard  a  leapin'  hoss  and  sicked  him  on  a  snake 
fence.  He  had  seen  pictures  in  the  papers  of  young  ladies 
soaring  over  hurdles  as  if  they  rode  sea  gulls,  but  he  reckoned 
it  was  not  for  him. 

Still,  Miss  Fleet  had  driven  him  to  taking  dancing  lessons 
and  maybe  they  was  somebody  somewhurz  who  would  sell 
him  a  set  of  jumpin'  lessons.  He  wondered  if  they  was  a 
cor'sponding-school  course  in  it.  He  had  "seen  where  it 
said  in  the  paper"  that  you  could  learn  singing  and  pianna- 
playing  by  cor'spondence.  So  why  not  jumpin'? 

Anyways,  he  was  going  to  take  all  the  lessons  there  were 
in  this  being  rich  business,  leastways  as  long  as  his  money 
held  out  to  burn.  At  the  rate  it  was  smoking,  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  would  last  him  about  a  year. 

This  sadly  solemn  thought  made  him  drowsy  and  he 
thrust  his  lank  figure  into  the  fine  linen  and  slept  till  all 
hours. 

In  fact,  he  was  wakened  by  his  telephone.  Some  luxury, 
that,  just  to  reach  out  of  bed  and  pull  the  telephone  over, 
set  it  on  your  chest,  and  talk  to  a  lady  without  getting  up 
and  dressing  first ! 

He  had  never  expected  to  hear  Miss  Fleet's  voice  un- 


MISS    NANCY    FLEET  153 

chaperoned  in  his  bedroom,  and  he  drew  the  covers  hastily 
over  him  when  he  caught  her  almost  glittering  accents. 

"I  hope  I  haven't  got  you  out  of  bed,"  she  began  when 
she  was  sure  it  was  he. 

"  Oh  no !    I  been  up  for  hours,"  he  lied,  with  fine  chivalry. 

"Well,  I've  been  up  all  night,"  she  groaned.  "My  poor 
cousin  has  just  fallen  asleep.  She  talked  herself  out,  and 
it's  my  first  chance  to  escape.  I  really  need  some  help  and 
some  advice  and  I  don't  want  to  go  to  any  of  our  friends. 
It  struck  me  that  you  were  just  the  man  of  all  men  to  do  us 
a  wonderful  service.  If  you  would!  Would  you?" 

"Anything  you  want,  from  killin'  one  or  mo'  min,  up  or 
down.  I'm  your  man." 

"  I  think  one  killin'  would  be  enough,"  she  answered,  "and 
it  would  just  about  solve  the  problem!  But  I'd  love  to  have 
a  word  with  you  first.  It's  not  exactly  a  telephone  subject. 
You  say  you've  been  up  for  hours.  Could  you  come  here 
at  once  for  a  little  while?  I've  got  a  luncheon  date  I  simply 
can't  break.  Could  you  come  right  away?" 

"  I'm  nearly  there  now ! "  he  cried. 

"Good-by,  then!"  she  said,  and  was  gone. 

He  sprang  from  the  bed  as  if  he  had  felt  a  Gila  monster 
under  him.  He  had  learned  from  casual  allusions  that  it 
was  indecent  not  to  begin  the  day  with  a  bath,  so  he  sped 
into  the  shower  and  out.  He  put  into  his  clothes  as  if  the 
telephone  girl  had  told  him  the  hotel  was  on  fire. 

His  gifted  left  hand  worked  at  buttons  while  his  right 
manipulated  comb  and  brush. 

His  gallant  lie  cost  him  the  privilege  of  breakfast,  and 
he  was  still  reassuring  himself  that  he  was  all  buttoned  in 
when  the  elevator  took  him  down. 

He  told  a  taxicab  driver  to  run  over  any  traffic  cop  that 
got  in  the  way,  and  they  made  the  distance  in  much  less  than 
the  legal  minimum,  without  arrest. 

When  he  was  ushered  into  Miss  Fleet's  presence  he  ex- 
plained his  delay  by  saying  that  the  taxicab  had  broken 
down  on  the  road. 

She  led  him  into  the  home  office  of  her  father,  who  had 
left  for  Broad  Street  long  before.  It  was  a  somber  wilder- 
11 


156  BEAUTY 

ness  of  precious  books  and  tables  and  cabinets,  and  of  chairs 
like  the  laps  of  the  gods. 

Larrick  had  indulged  himself  in  visions  of  gathering  Miss 
Fleet  into  his  arms  as  soon  as  he  met  her,  but  she  looked  too 
haggard  and  anxious,  and  she  was  in  no  mood  for  romance. 
1  She  was  tasting  the  too  bitter  ashes  of  it. 

She  motioned  him  to  a  vast  fauteuil  of  almost  smothering 
comfort,  but  she  sat  on  the  edge  of  a  great  carved  table  or 
walked  the  floor  as  she  told  him  of  Mrs.  Coykendall's  plight. 

She  answered  the  riddle  of  the  night  before,  but  she  posed 
a  new  one  whose  solution  was  not  a  matter  for  curiosity, 
but  for  action. 

He  looked  upon  her  as  a  sphinx,  but  he  was  no  (Edipus 
when  it  came  to  solving  the  puzzle. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

"  VOU  heard  so  much  last  night,"  she  began,  "that 'you 

A  have  a  right — and  an  obligation — to  hear  more.  You 
did  overhear  something,  didn't  you?" 

"Well,  yes,  something,"  Larrick  mumbled.  "I  couldn't 
he'p  maseff.  But  don't  tell  me  anything  you  don't  want  to, 
unless  I  can  he'p  you.  You  didn't  ask  me  not  to  tell  any- 
body, and  I  hope  it  was  because  you  knew  I  wouldn't." 

"I  thought  you  were  safe,"  she  smiled,  drearily.  "But 
just  what  did  you  hear?" 

"Well,  I  heard  the  lady  say  her  husband  was  goin*  to 
sue  her  for  divo'ce  and  had  evidence  aplenty,  but  she  was 
innocent — 'all  too  innocent,'  I  think  she  said." 

Nancy  nodded  grimly. 

"I  didn't  ask  you  last  night  to  keep  this  and  I  don't  ask 
you  now.  If  a  person  doesn't  keep  such  things  by  instinct, 
no  promises  will  hold  him.  But  I  trust  you.  Lord  knows,  I 
trusted  you  with  my  own  reputation  last  night — a  poor  thing, 
but  all  I've  got.  But  no  matter  about  me. 

"It's  insane  of  me  to  tell  you  the  rest  of  Mrs.  Coykendall's 
affairs.  I've  no  right  to  burden  you  with  them,  but  Louise 
has  made  me  as  hysterical  as  she  is.  So  here  goes.  It  would 
take  all  day  to  tell  what  she  took  all  night  to  tell,  but  this 
is  the  gist  of  it,  if  you  want  to  hear  it." 

"I  want  to  hear  anything  you'll  do  me  the  honor  of  tellin' 
me." 

"Very  graceful,  especially  for  so  early  in  the  day,  but — 
well — Louise — I  told  you  last  night  what  a  rotter — what 
a  flitter  her  husband  was — is ! — always  will  be.  But  Louise 
couldn't  bring  herself  to  believe  him  hopeless.  She  tried 
all  the  schemes  she  had  ever  heard  or  read  about;  and  I 
suppose  there  are  more  fool  suggestions  for  holding  love 
than  for  curing  colds.  Every  daily  paper  is  full  of  both 


158  BEAUTY 

and  none  of  them  are  any  good,  either  for  cold  hearts  or 
noses. 

"But  Louise  read  a  book  or  two  and  saw  a  play  or  two 
where  a  wife  tried  the  old  dodge  of  making  a  careless  husband 
jealous.  It  never  failed  to  bring  him  back  forever — in  the 
books  and  plays.  So  she  decided  to  try  the  record  on  her 
own  Victrola.  It  was  her  last  desperate  effort  before  she 
turned  her  face  over  to  the  surgeon. 

"She  dreamed  it  all  out.  She  would  pick  up  some  fool 
man  and  throw  herself  at  his  head  where  Roy,  her  husband, 
could  see  her.  Then  he  would  hurry  back  to  her  on  his 
knees.  Well,  just  in  time,  as  luck  would  have  it,  Roy  him- 
self introduced  her  to  a  handsome  man — O.  K.'d  his  family 
and  all  that — and  left  them  together. 

"It  was  so  providential  and  so  pat  that  Louise  ought  to 
have  suspected  it. 

"I've  always  found,  in  playing  poker,  that  if  I  needed 
one  card  to  fill  a  flush,  and  drew  it,  it  wouldn't  do  me  any 
good.  Somebody  else  would  have  a  better  hand,  or  nobody- 
would  bet  at  all. 

"But  Louise  was  too  blind  with  love  to  have  either  wisdom 
or  conscience.  She  began  to  lead  this  young  fellow  on.  He 
was  good-looking,  too  good-looking  to  be  trusted.  And  he 
walked  into  the  trap  entirely  too  easily. 

"Louise  began  to  feel  a  little  guilty  when  the  luck  ran 
her  way,  and  it  hurt  her  to  see  how  quickly  the  fellow  fell 
in  love  with  her.  She  vowed  that  as  soon  as  she  won  Roy 
back  she  would  find  the  nicest,  prettiest  girl  in  town  for 
Boyd  Cowper — that's  the  man's  name — and  make  her 
marry  him. 

"In  the  meanwhile  she  managed  to  have  Cowper  hanging 
around  at  the  hours  when  Roy  was  expected  home  for 
dinner.  He  came  home  and  found  the  man  there  a  few  times 
and  scowled  and  went  on  up  to  his  room.  Louise  thought 
she  was  succeeding  gloriously. 

"When  she  and  Roy  went  out  to  a  dance  anywhere  to- 
gether she  saw  to  it  that  Cowper  was  invited  and  she  paid 
him  marked  attention,  danced  with  him  too  often  and  hung 
on,  to  him  in  a  lovesick  way. 


MISS    NANCY    FLEET  159 

"Roy  commented  on  this  once  or  twice  and  Louise  told 
him  that  she  had  a  right  to  other  men's  attention  since  he 
gave  her  none.  Well,  this  went  on  and  on,  but  Roy's 
jealousy  didn't  seem  to  be  turning  to  love. 

"Louise  grew  frantic.  She  took  a  long  chance.  It's 
easy  to  say  she  oughtn't  to  have  done  it  and  she  deserved 
what  she  got,  but  it  was  her  wifely  infatuation  with  a  no- 
good  husband  that  was  the  cause  of  it  all. 

"This  fellow  Cowper  began  to  make  love  to  Louise  as 
if  he  had  rehearsed  a  part  in  a  play.  She  encouraged 
him  just  a  little  to  keep  him  interested.  She  permitted  a 
caress  or  two,  rebuked  him,  but  forgave  him  and  let  him 
call  again.  He  grew  bolder.  She  got  a  little  frightened, 
but  was  still  more  afraid  to  give  up  her  scheme,  since  she'd 
gone  so  far. 

"Once  or  twice  a  new  second  man  happened  in  just  as 
Cowper  was  holding  her  hand.  Once  or  twice  a  new  maid 
blundered  upon  them.  We  don't  have  many  old  family 
servants  any  more — just  a  procession  of  new  ones.  Louise 
suffered  agonies  of  humiliation,  but,  like  a  crazy  gambler, 
she  hoped  that  the  next  bet  would  turn  the  luck. 

"One  afternoon  when  she'd  been  riding  in  the  Park  she 
came  home  and  found  Cowper  there  waiting  for  her.  He  said 
he  had  met  Roy  and  Roy  was  going  to  take  a  girl  to  tea  at 
the  Biltmore.  Louise  decided  to  go  there  and  make  him 
jealous.  She  asked  Cowper  to  take  her,  and  rushed  up  to 
her  room  to  change  from  riding  togs  to  dancing.  It  never 
occurred  to  her  to  lock  her  door,  and  she  was  just — well — 
between  costumes  when,  to  her  amazement,  her  horror, 
Cowper  slipped  into  her  room.  She  ordered  him  out.  He 
refused  to  go.  He  took  her  in  his  arms.  She  ought  to  have 
called  a  servant,  but  that  was  just  what  she  didn't  want  to  do. 
She  was  sure  she  would  be  blamed  for  encouraging  him  to 
such  audacity.  She  blamed  herself  bitterly.  But  the  man 
had  been  so  meek  and  manageable  before  that  she  was  sure 
she  could  put  him  out  quietly. 

"She  commanded  him  to  go,  but  he  wouldn't.  Then  the 
new  maid  appeared,  said,  'Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon!'  and 
vanished. 


160  BEAUTY 

"Louise  almost  fainted  with  shame  and  rage.  She  just 
dropped  and  began  to  cry. 

"She  hadn't  the  strength  to  tear  Cowper's  eyes  out.  She 
hardly  knew  he  was  there  till  she  realized  that  he  still  had 
her  in  his  arms.  Now  she  implored  him  to  go  and  never 
come  near  her  again.  But  he  clung  to  her  till  she  got  hold  of 
a  pair  of  scissors  and  threatened  to  drive  them  into  his  eyes. 
Then  he  went. 

"At  the  foot  of  the  stairs  he  met  Roy  coming  up.  Instead 
of  killing  him  Roy  dashed  up  to  Louise  and  called  her  every 
name  he  could  think  of.  He  wouldn't  listen  to  her,  but  had 
his  things  packed  and  sent  to  the  club. 

"Of  course  Louise  wouldn't  see  Cowper  again.  In  fact, 
he  took  her  at  her  word  and  never  came  near  her.  She  was 
frantic.  Roy  wouldn't  answer  her  letters.  He  wouldn't 
come  to  the  telephone  at  his  club.  At  his  office  he  left  word 
that  he  was  always  out  when  she  called. 

"It  was  then  in  her  desperation  that  she  read  one  of  those 
beauty-doctor  advertisements,  promising  eternal  youth.  It 
struck  the  poor  crazy  thing  that  here  was  a  way,  the  only 
way,  to  get  Roy  back — to  appeal  to  his  love  for  a  pretty 
face  by  getting  herself  one. 

"She  lost  no  time.  She  went  right  to  the  private  hospital 
and  had  everything  done,  including  a  few  new  experiments. 
I  told  you  the  ghastly  result. 

"Well,  if  Roy  Coykendall  were  fit  to  live,  Louise's  pain 
and  sacrifice  for  him  would  have  broken  his  heart  for  her. 
He  would  have  taken  it  as  a  penance  even  for  the  guilt  he 
accused  her  of.  Instead,  he  began  to  demand  that  she 
divorce  him.  The  poor  mad  creature  refused. 

"He  stormed  at  her,  'Then,  by  God!  I'll  divorce  you.' 

"She  laughed  through  her  veil,  'It  takes  evidence  for  that, 
dearest,  thank  Heaven!' 

"'Oh,  I've  got  the  evidence,  all  right!'  he  said. 

"'You  can't  have,'  Louise  answered,  'because  there's 
been  no  guilt.' 

'"Tell  that  to  the  jury,'  he  sneered.  And  then  he  flung 
at  her  copies  of  affidavits  he  had  secured.  The  maid  testi- 
fied to  what  she  had  seen  and  what  she  had  imagined.  She 


MISS    NANCY    FLEET  161 

confessed  to  calling  the  second  man  and  he  testified  that 
he  had  peeked  through  a  keyhole  and  seen — well,  he  cor- 
roborated it.  And  then,  to  crown  the  whole  nightmare,  Roy 
had  secured  an  affidavit  from — you'll  never  believe  it — a 
sworn  confession  from  Boyd  Cowper!" 

This  incredible  thing  sent  Larrick  into  the  air  as  if  a 
copperhead  had  struck  at  him  without  warning.  He  felt 
the  ugliness  of  it  like  a  venom  running  blazing  through  his 
veins.  It  poisoned  all  men. 

He  gasped:  "Cowper!  He  confessed?  What  could  he 
confess  to?" 

"Oh,  to  all  the  lovemaking,  the  meetings,  the  fact  that  he 
was  in  Louise's  room.  Then  he  stopped  and  said  he  refused 
to  answer  further  lest  he  incriminate  himself.  That's  worse 
than  if  he  had  actually  sworn  to  a  lie. 

"I  believe  Louise  is  innocent.  I  know  she  is.  She's  the 
kind  that  would  have  boasted  of  deceiving  Roy  if  she  could 
have  brought  herself  to  it  at  all. 

"She's  almost  insane.  She's  lost  her  beauty,  her  home, 
and  even  her  good  name.  That's  a  pretty  tough  price  to  pay 
for  loving  one  man  and  trying  to  hold  him,  isn't  it?  When 
you  think  of  the  women  in  this  town,  and  other  towns,  rich 
and  poor,  who  don't  care  what  they  do,  and  still  hold  their 
heads  up  and  keep  their  homes,  it's  pretty  tough,  I  say. 
If  it  doesn't  put  Louise  in  the  madhouse  it's  because  her 
blood  is  as  pure  as  her  heart.  She's  the  decentest  damned 
fool  I  know  and — " 

The  little  swear  word  broke  her  and  she  began  to  blubber. 
She  was  one  of  the  new  women  who  cry  so  seldom  that  they 
do  not  weep  gracefully.  She  hated  her  tears  and  despised 
herself,  flung  about,  trying  to  shake  off  the  weakness. 

Larrick  gathered  her  into  his  arms  to  uphold  her,  but  she 
thrust  him  off,  scolding. 

"Oh,  no  lovemaking!  None  of  that  awful  rot  in  mine, 
please!" 

He  ached  with  pity  for  her  and  for  the  woman  asleep 
somewhere  in  the  gaudy  mansion  in  her  sordid  woes.  As  he 
pondered  the  matter  the  figure  of  Cowper  overshadowed  all 
the  others  in  its  reptilian  odium. 


i6a  BEAUTY 

"I  see  what  you  want  of  me,"  he  growled.  "You  want 
me  to  kill  Cowper." 

"I  could  do  that  myself,"  Nancy  muttered,  "but  he's 
vanished.  Louise,  when  she  had  read  the  affidavits,  called 
him  on  the  telephone  at  once  to  appeal  to  him.  But  she  got 
word  that  he  had  left  town  and  his  address  was  unknown. 
The  servants  had  gone,  too.  She  couldn't  find  them. 

"Then  she  thought  of  me.  We'd  always  been  pally.  She 
telephoned  every  few  minutes.  But  I  was  out  in  the  rain, 
spooning  with  you.  My  God!  I  deserve  what  Louise  has  got, 
and  here  I  am  asking  you  to  help  us." 

"It's  the  proudest  thing  I  ever  had  happen,"  Larrick 
sighed,  "and  all  I  want  is  for  you  to  tell  me  what  to  do — 
who  to  kill  and  where  to  find  him  at — or  anything." 

Nancy  seized  his  arm  and  clenched  it  in  acknowledgment 
of  his  proffer  of  knighthood.  But  she  was  as  empty  of  in- 
spiration as  he.  She  had  mainly  wanted  somebody  to  share 
the  curse  with. 

She  felt  that  Larrick  would  really  have  committed  death 
upon  anyone  she  designated.  It  was  horrible,  but  it  had  a 
beauty  in  it. 

He  came  of  a  civilization  where  old-time  chivalry  survives 
with  all  its  evils  and  all  its  irresistible  splendors,  where 
duels  are  common  upon  the  highways,  and  where  a  woman's 
name  had  a  fatal  import ;  where ' '  draw  and  defend  yourself ! ' ' 
refers  to  a  pistol  instead  of  a  sword,  but  is  otherwise  as  fre- 
quent and  as  deadly  as  in  the  days  of  Malory  and  Froissart. 

In  New  York  there  was  more  shooting  than  in  any  other 
city  in  the  world,  perhaps,  except  Chicago  and  one  or  two 
other  American  cities,  but  robbery  was  the  cause  of  most  of 
it,  or  gang  quarrel;  or,  if  love  were  involved,  it  was  likely  to 
be  some  wretched  mockery  of  it,  some  vile  passion. 

In  the  South  it  still  held  a  certain  dignity  because  it 
retained  the  tradition  of  the  feudal  days. 

After  her  crisis  of  tears  Nancy  Fleet  seemed  to  be  restored 
to  sanity.  The  fierce  lust  for  revenge  took  on  a  morning- 
after  chill,  and  she  saw  in  Larrick  a  quaint  and  frightful 
survival  of  another  period.  She  was  afraid  of  him  as  he 
stood  waiting  only  for  the  word  to  go  and  hunt  a  man  down. 


MISS    NANCY   FLEET  163 

She  felt  a  revulsion  toward  Louise  Coykendall  as  well. 
To  her,  life  was  as  much  too  precious  as  it  was  too  cheap  with 
Larrick. 

"After  all,"  she  said,  dismally,  "I  suppose  that  Roy  is 
only  doing  all  this  to  force  Louise  to  divorce  him.  He  is 
determined  to  get  free  of  her  if  he  has  to  drag  her  in  the 
gutter.  But  he  would  probably  be  glad  to  furnish  her  with 
evidence  against  him  if  she  would  accept  it  and  use  it.  He 
offered  to  several  times  before,  but  she  wouldn't  have  it." 

Larrick  felt  a  slump  from  the  rough  crags  of  tragedy  to  the 
dull  sands  of  commonplace. 

"Divo'ce  ought  to  be  easy  enough  in  this  state,"  he  said, 
"seein'  how  easy  it  is  in  Texas." 

"Oh,  but  it's  almost  impossible  in  New  York,"  Nancy 
exclaimed.  "There's  only  one  ground,  you  know." 

"Don't  they  allow  it  for  desertion  or  cruelty  or  any  of 
those  things?" 

Nancy  shook  her  head.     "There's  only  one  ground." 

"Why,  in  Texas,  we  allow  it  on  six  grounds,  and  down 
there  we  think  Texas  is  the  most  moral  state  in  the  world 
and  New  York  the  most  immoral.  We  think  that  if  a  couple 
don't  hit  it  off  they  got  a  right  to  try  again. 

"A  friend  of  mine  hitched  up  with  a  right  nice  girl,  but 
they  didn't  gee,  somehow.  She  was  something  of  a  hell 
cat  and  wouldn't  let  him  off,  so  finally  he  sued  her  on 
the  ground  of  cruelty,  'renderin'  life  unsuppo'table,'  as 
the  law  says. 

"He  testified  that  her  cookin'  was  awful  bad,  and  took  all 
the  meanin'  out  of  his  vittles.  The  judge  knew  'em  both  well 
and  liked  'em  both,  and,  besides,  he  was  very  fond  of  his 
food — weighed  over  two  hundred — the  judge,  I  mean.  So 
he  allowed  that  bad  cookin'  was  one  of  the  cruelest  cruelties 
there  was  and  he  granted  the  divo'ce.  Everybody  said  he 
was  a  wise  judge  and  nobody  thought  any  the  worse  of  the 
girl.  She  married  a  fellow  who  struck  oil  and  could  affode 
a  cook,  so  she's  right  happy  now.  And  her  first  husband  is 
happy,  too,  with  a  lady  who  runs  a  lunch  counter. 

"Looks  like  to  me  that  you-all  up  North  would  get  along 
betta  if  you  didn't  take  things  so  serious.  If  New  York 


164  BEAUTY 

loosened  up  in  her  divo'ce  laws  it  might  improve  things. 
Lots  of  preachers  are  always  howlin'  about  so  many  divo'ces, 
but  as  far  as  I  can  find  out  the  places  where  they  are  hardest 
to  get  is  where  they  need  'em  most. 

"Some  folks  say  that  tight  divo'ce  laws  would  save  the 
Ame'can  home,  but  I've  found  that  nothin'  makes  a  cayuse 
buck  like  a  cinch  that's  too  tight.  He'll  naturally  buck 
himself  to  death  if  he  don't  bust  the  strap  or  somebody 
don't  onloosen  him. 

"Now  this  fella  Coykendall.  I  don't  like  him  the  least 
bit,  from  what  you  tell  about  him.  But  if  he  had  his  wife 
down  in  Texas  now,  and  couldn't  stand  her  any  longer,  he'd 
just  go  to  co'te  and  bring  some  of  her  biscuits  along  to  prove 
her  cookin'  was  no  'count.  The  judge  would  allow  him  free 
and  no  disgrace  to  the  lady.  Looks  like  to  me  that  this 
Mrs.  Coykendall—" 

But  he  stopped  short.  He  must  not  say  what  he  was 
thinking.  He  had  little  sympathy  for  anybody,  man  or 
woman,  who  insisted  on  hanging  on  to  a  woman  or  a  man 
who  did  not  want  to  be  hung  on  to,  and  he  would  have 
approved  any  gentle,  but  firm,  method  that  Coykendall 
might  have  employed  to  pry  Mrs.  Coykendall 's  grip  loose. 
But  to  blast  her  good  name  and  accuse  her  of  being  fast, 
to  bribe  servants  to  swear  to  it  and  scare  a  white-livered 
lover  into  a  false  confession,  that  was  the  act  of  a  desperado. 
Shooting  was  too  good  for  him. 

Larrick  would  have  been  glad  to  make  one  of  a  lynching 
bee  to  string  him  up  to  any  of  New  York's  multitudinous 
lamp-posts. 

He  was  not  religious.  He  had  been  little  to  church  as 
boy  or  man.  He  had  never  even  heard  that  marriage  had 
been  declared  a  sacrament  about  the  time  that  America  was 
discovered — and  not  before. 

He  could  not  see  what  religion  had  to  do  with  marriage, 
since  it  was  specifically  stated  that  there  was  none  in  heaven. 
As  for  earthly  bliss, it  was  well  known  that  religious  disputes 
were  the  bitterest  and  the  most  incessant  of  all.  Many 
couples  had  split  because  they  could  not  agree  on  the  church 
to  get  married  in.  Some  of  his  friends  had  been  spliced 


MISS    NANCY    FLEET  165 

by  parsons  and  some  by  justices  of  the  peace,  and  he  had 
seen  no  difference  in  the  results.  Some  of  both  sorts  were 
failures;  and  some,  successes. 

If  a  man  could  marry  again  as  fast  as  his  wives  died  he 
did  not  see  why  he  should  not  marry  again  if  his  wife  divorced 
him.  Most  of  the  Texan  couples  he  had  known  in  his 
humble  experience  were  as  happy  as  their  temperaments 
permitted.  Most  of  them  had  known  so  little  of  luxury  and 
had  asked  so  little  of  life  that  they  had  expected  little  of 
marriage  and,  having  got  it,  had  been  content. 

But  up  here  in  this  realm  where  luxury  was  daily  bread, 
and  where  the  appetite  for  rapture  and  beauty  of  every  kind 
was  whetted,  not  appeased,  by  gratification,  too  much  was 
being  asked  of  marriage,  perhaps.  Perhaps  no  man  or 
woman  could  give  as  much  grace  and  charm,  novelty  and 
everlasting  refreshment,  as  the  other  party  to  the  union 
required  to  keep  interested. 

It  was  not  that  the  poor  millionaires  were  as  sinful  as 
their  critics  insisted — those  ruthless  satirists  who  never 
dream  of  wasting  justice  or  mercy  or  pity  on  people  who 
have  money.  It  was  simply  that  they  longed  for  delight. 

They  wanted  love  to  be  an  art,  a  music,  a  poem — not  an 
eternal  slicing  of  the  same  loaf  of  bread,  the  better  for  being 
stale.  At  least  some  of  them  did,  or  were  so  advertised  by 
the  newspapers,  which  make  nothing  of  the  poor  mobs 
that  pour  through  the  divorce  mills,  and  make  everything 
of  the  occasional  rich  who  fall  into  it. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  well-to-do  were  more  likely  to 
dwell  happily  together  than  the  poor — and  did,  with  fewer 
quarrels  and  more  infrequent  tragedy. 

Nancy's  father  and  mother  had  never  fought  more  bit- 
terly than  is  to  be  expected  in  a  lively  home.  Their  wedlock 
had  been  as  comfortable  as  could  humanly  be.  Yet  Nancy 
forgot  them  and  the  very  solidity  of  the  home  they  had 
built  in  her  resentment  of  the  Coykendall  fiasco. 

She  had  hardly  listened  to  Larrick's  chatter  about  liberal 
divorce.  She  knew  the  New  York  ordeal.  She  foresaw 
how  greedily  the  scandal  would  be  seized  upon  and  magni- 
fied. The  papers  would  give  it  the  prominence  of  an  inter- 


166  BEAUTY 

national  war.  And  none  of  the  allied  relatives  and  friends 
would  escape. 

Nancy  was  fearless  of  nearly  everything  but  the  news- 
papers. She  was  governed  by  that  phobia  which  has  be- 
come the  chief  terror  of  modern  life. 

She  threw  all  the  blame  for  the  past  secret  sorrows  of 
Louise  and  for  her  future  notorious  sorrows  on  the  institution 
of  marriage,  and  it  froze  Larrick's  blood  to  hear  her  rage! 

"My  cousin  Louise's  romance  had  the  most  ideal  begin- 
ning— lifelong  acquaintance,  insane  love,  brief  and  happy 
engagement,  parental  approval  on  both  sides,  plenty  of 
money  on  both  sides,  magnificent  church  wedding,  a  few 
beautiful  early  children — everything! 

"And  now  it  has  gone  to  smash  as  if  all  the  rules  had  been 
broken  and  a  curse  put  on  it  by  everybody. 

"I  suppose  if  the  truth  were  known,  Louise  is  as  much  at 
fault  as  Roy.  But  it's  marriage  that's  really  to  blame.  I've 
seen  so  many  marriages  of  every  kind,  elopements,  con- 
ventional attachments,  rich  and  poor,  native  and  foreign; 
and,  Lord!  how  they  fail! 

"I  hope  to  God  I'm  never  fool  enough  to  take  the  plunge 
off  the  cliff.  It  will  be  lonely  sometimes,  but  there's  no 
loneliness  like  what  so  many  of  the  wives  I  know  are  suf- 
fering— and  some  of  the  husbands,  too.  No  marriage  in 
mine,  thank  you!" 

Larrick  had  not  asked  her  to  marry  him  and  had  no 
dream  of  daring  so  high,  but  he  could  not  endure  to  hear  a 
woman  so  marvelously  equipped  and  modeled  for  love,  so 
plainly,  so  beautifully  intended  for  marriage,  denouncing  it 
wholesale  and  forswearing  her  destiny.  He  put  out  his 
hand  toward  her  and  murmured: 

"Now,  honey — " 

But  she  knocked  his  hand  off  and  snarled: 

"Agh!  you  men!" 

When  she  saw  the  hurt  look  in  his  eyes  she  patted  his  hand 
apologetically  and  laughed: 

"And  for  the  matter  of  that — agh!  us  women!" 

She  went  on  laughing,  a  low,  monotonous,  uncanny  laugh 
that  she  could  not  stop.  It  became  a  kind  of  gibbering. 


MISS    NANCY    FLEET  167 

Larrick  expected  her  to  begin  to  shriek  with  hysterics,  but 
she  had  just  enough  self-control  to  deny  herself  that  relief. 
Suddenly  she  caught  sight  of  the  clock. 

"Oh,  Lord!  I'll  be  late  to  my  luncheon,  and  it's  with 
one  of  those  delightful  demons  who  gets  hurt  and  won't 
wait.  My  car  must  be  outside.  Give  me  two  minutes 
and  I'll  be  right  down  and  take  you  with  me.  Where 
shall  I  drop  you?" 

"You're  always  droppin'  me!" 

"But  I  always  pick  you  up  again.  Where  shall  I  drop 
you  this  time?" 

He  looked  at  his  watch. 

"I'm  due  at  my  dancin'  lesson,  but  I  don't  reckon  there's 
any  use  takin'  any  mo'  lessons.  I  suppose  there'll  be  no  mo' 
dancin'  now  for  us." 

Nancy  mocked  his  pathos: 

"Oh,  there'll  always  be  more  dancing.  I'll  bet  you  ariy- 
thing  you  like  that  Louise  will  be  dancing  one  of  these  days 
again.  She'll  put  off  her  mask,  too,  in  time.  Nothing  lasts 
— love  or  grief  or  shame  or  anything.  They're  always  re- 
newed, all  of  them,  but  the  old  grief  gives  way  to  the  new, 
and —  But  I'd  better  stop  before  I  get  literary.  Go  on  and 
take  your  lesson.  If  you  don't  dance  with  me,  there's  always 
somebody  else." 

"There'll  be  nobody  else  for  me  but  you." 

He  said  it  with  such  sincerity  that  she  gave  him  a  quick, 
searching  glance.  There  was  a  hunger  of  yearning  in  her 
eyes,  but  she  denied  it  at  once. 

"I  remember  Roy  Coykendall  saying  almost  those  very 
words  to  me  once.  '  There'll  never  be  anybody  else  for  me 
but  Louise,'  he  said  and  he  meant  it.  And  now  look  at  the 
damned  things. 

"  I  wonder  how  long  it  will  be  before  you  get  a  new  craze. 
I  give  you  a  week  to  forget  me.  Try  to  love  me  till  I  get 
back.  I'm  just  going  upstairs  to  wash  my  eyes  and  get  a 
dry  hanky." 

She  turned  for  a  postscript . 

"But  there's  one  thing  you  needn't  worry  about:  I'll 
never  pursue  you  when  you  run  after  somebody  else.  So 


i68  BEAUTY 

please  feel  perfectly  free.  I  don't  love  you,  and  I'm  not 
going  to — you  or  anybody." 

How  true  a  prophetess  she  was  in  one  vaticination! — How 
false  -in  another! 

Nancy's  two  minutes  were  nearly  half  an  hour.  Larrick 
had  time  to  wander  about  the  great  room  and  marvel  at  a 
few  of  its  treasures.  He  was  as  ignorant  of  their  historical 
or  artistic  significance  as  a  porter  from  the  river  Kasai  would 
have  been.  He  had  merely  a  sense  of  stupefaction  at  the 
labor  expended  in  the  cover  of  a  book,  the  tooling,  the  gold- 
work,  the  comfort  to  the  touch  that  made  it  as  pleasantly 
caressable  as  a  woman's  skin  almost.  There  was  a  piece 
of  chiseled  ivory  in  which  the  maker  had  evidently  set  him- 
self almost  impossible  problems  just  for  the  pleasure  of 
conflict,  tiny  modelings  of  almost  microscopical  delicacy. 
Hardly  anyone  would  even  see  it  or  admire  it,  and  yet  it  had 
pleased  some  long-dead  carver  to  go  blind  for  the  sake  of  this 
infinitesimal  anonymous  monument. 

Lamck's  heart  was  wrung  with  thwarted  sympathies  and 
ignorance  as  he  sauntered  from  curio  cabinet  to  bookshelf 
and  back.  He  was  gazing  up  at  a  time-tarnished  portrait 
of  somebody  by  somebody  when  Nancy's  voice  made  him 
jump. 

He  whirled  and  found  her  a  work  of  such  superhuman  wit 
that  he  forgot  the  other  wonders  for  this.  The  same  in- 
stincts that  led  him  to  stroke  the  bookbinding  with  glad- 
ened  fingers,  and  to  study  the  ivory  carving  with  delighted 
eyes,  carried  his  hand  out  to  touch  this  human  object  of 
vertu  and  draw  her  close  enough  to  study. 

But  Nancy  frowned  with  a  tormented  smile,  dodged  him, 
and  marched  out  into  the  hall,  where  a  sentinel  stood  waiting 
with  Larrick's  hat  and  stick.  The  opened  door  revealed 
Fifth  Avenue  in  a  blinding  glare  of  morning  light  and, 
opposite,  the  trees  of  Central  Park  in  motionless,  glistening 
green. 

Nancy  paused  in  terror  of  the  heat,  then  made  the  plunge 
and  hurried  to  her  limousine.  Larrick  climbed  in  after  and 
she  gave  the  driver  Mrs.  Kadrew's  street  number. 

She  smiled  into  the  greedy  eyes  of  Larrick.     There  was 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  169 

always  something  back  of  her  eyes  and  they  always  seemed 
to  see  something  back  of  his  eyes.  She  played  with  love  as 
with  cards,  asking  no  advantages  because  she  was  only  a 
girl.  She  alternated  bluff  with  frankness,  inscrutability  with 
candor,  but  she  never  expected  or  would  tolerate  any  mercy. 

"Now  that  we  women  have  got  the  vote,"  she  would  say, 
"we've  got  to  give  up  all  that  old  stuff  and  nonsense  about 
being  the  weaker  sex,  being  betrayed  and  abandoned  and 
wronged.  When  we  lose  a  love  fight  we've  got  to  take  our 
punishment  like  good  sports." 

She  was  feeling  quite  the  gambler  now.  This  plainsman 
who  had  interested  her  at  first  as  an  uncouth  novelty  was 
fascinating  her  now  as  a  dangerous  opposite  with  a  new  line 
of  tricks,  a  different  technic.  The  fact  that  he  was  uncon- 
scious of  his  own  skill  and  doubly  perilous  because  of  his 
desperate  sincerity  made  him  all  the  more  exciting. 

As  the  car  stopped  at  Mrs.  Kadrew's  door  she  said: 

"If  you'll  make  a  good  lesson  of  it  to-day,  I'll  put  you 
through  your  paces  to-night,  and  we'll  have  a  dance  together." 

"I'm  afraid  I  won't  be  ready." 

"You'd  better  be.  I'm  leaving  town  to-morrow  on  my 
father's  power  boat.  Dad  has  a  big  house  at  Newport, 
and  you  won't  see  me  again,  not  then  unless  you  come 
there." 

"Good  Lord!  You're  not  goin'  to  leave  me  all  ba  maseff 
in  this  man's  town?" 

She  was  touched  by  his  dismay  at  the  thought  of  losing 
her.  She  squeezed  his  hand  and  said: 

"  I  made  this  date  before  I  knew  you.  I'd  break  it,  but — 
it  wouldn't  be  white  on  such  short  notice.  Call  for  me  to- 
night at — say,  at  ten,  and  we'll  have  a  farewell  dance 
somewhere." 

This  was  so  amazing  that  he  stood  gaping  as  her  car  left 
him.  He  forgot  to  lift  his  hat  till  it  was  too  late  for  her  to 
receive  the  salute.  But  then  she  had  just  cast  formality 
and  gallantry  overboard  with  a  splash. 

The  extent  of  this  jetsam  terrified  him.  She  was  evidently 
not  in  the  least  afraid  of  him.  That  made  him  utterly 
afraid  of  her. 


CHAPTER  IX 

'T'HE  extremes  of  the  emotional  experiences  of  these  New 
1  Yorkers  made  Larrick  giddy.  Their  life  was  like  a 
scenic  railway  at  a  cheap  amusement  park — shoot  up  to  the 
tree  tops!  plunge  to  the  depths!  whirl  round  a  curve!  roar 
through  the  dark !  climb  and  swoop !  risk  everything,  bodies 
and  souls  and  all — and  pay  for  the  privilege ! 

This  Nancy  Fleet  who  had  wept  before  him  for  the  fate 
of  her  cousin  had  waved  to  him  with  the  cheer  of  a  girl 
ignorant  that  sorrow  had  even  been  invented. 

She  had  talked  to  him  about  never  loving  anybody,  yet 
she  had  let  him  kiss  her  and  never  implied  that  either  of  them 
had  incurred  a  solemn  obligation.  She  frankly  told  him  she 
was  on  her  way  to  lunch  with  another  man,  and  would  go 
on  his  yacht,  and  yet  she  asked  him  to  take  her  out  to  a 
dance  at  ten  o'clock. 

Of  course  all  this  could  have  been  duplicated  in  any 
village.  There  were  facile  and  fickle  girls  in  the  cowlands, 
too.  There  were  general  flirts,  and  sly  sage  hens  who  were 
up  to  any  mischief  so  long  as  it  was  secret;  and  high-chinned 
girls  who  would  ride  anywhere  with  anybody  and  stand  no 
nonsense  either  from  companions  or  gossips. 

He  had  ridden  alone  with  more  than  one  girl,  miles  from 
the  sight  of  man.  He  had  gone  buggy  riding  to  far-off 
dances  and  brought  his  girl  home  at  daybreak,  and  her 
father  had  never  thought  of  shooting  him  down  or  insisting 
on  a  shotgun  wedding,  a  military  wedding  they  called  it 
nowadays. 

There  had  been  plenty  of  sin  and  scandal  back  there  in 
Arcadia,  too,  but  it  was  part  of  the  credit  and  debit  of  life's 
bookkeeping. 

The  poor  and  plain  were  forgiven  for  their  lack  of  conven- 


MISS    NANCY   FLEET  171 

tion,  and,  if  they  fell  sometimes,  it  was  usually  thought  of 
gently. 

But  the  rich,  the  city  folk — there  was  something  damned 
about  everything  they  did.  A  girl  dressed  in  the  latest 
fashion  was  already  a  bad  one  in  the  homelier  eye. 

Larrick  would  have  been  merely  tickled  at  an  invitation 
to  take  one  of  his  desert  beauties  to  a  late  dance.  He  would 
have  looked  forward  to  a  bit  of  spooning  and  selected  a 
tractable  horse.  The  girl's  paw  and  maw  would  probably 
have  joked  him  about  driving  with  one  hand,  and  said, 
"We  was  young  ourse'ves  once." 

To  go  buggy  riding  with  the  gorgeous  Nancy  Fleet, 
though,  and  to  a  dance  in  Babylon  town — that  gave  him  a 
scare.  But  the  scare  was  only  a  spur  to  his  broncho  imagina- 
tion and  his  heart  was  bucking  gloriously  as  he  went  to  his 
lesson.  His  mood  was  just  the  mood  for  the  new  dances, 
and  Mrs.  Kadrew  found  that  in  place  of  encouraging  him 
not  to  be  afraid  she  had  to  caution  him  to  moderate  his 
hilarity. 

She  enjoyed  the  romping,  but  she  warned  him  that  he 
would  be  dancing  in  a  crowded  ballroom  and  not  on  the  lone 
prairie.  He  had  the  knack  of  it  now,  at  least,  and  his  feet 
had  learned  to  obey  his  whim.  His  partner  could  be  relied 
on  to  foreknow  his  next  step  and  meet  it  with  the  com- 
plementary maneuver. 

That  was  one  of  the  miracles  of  the  modern  school — the 
rapport  of  the  partners  who  moved,  spun,  sidled,  dipped,  or 
tiptoed  in  a  mystic  oneness  of  spirit  and  flesh. 

What  young  Mr.  Montague  felt  when  he  stole  through  the 
garden  to  young  Miss  Capulet's  balcony  was  what  Gad 
Larrick  felt  when  his  taxicab  halted  before  the  moon- 
silvered  mansion  of  Miss  Fleet,  but  he  had  no  Shakespeare 
to  dress  up  his  vague  yearnings  in  godlike  poetry.  Juliet 
was  merely  infantile  when  her  father  tried  to  force  her  to 
marry  the  wrong  man  and  drove  her  to  the  tomb.  At 
twelve  Nancy  Fleet's  father  thought  of  her  as  still  a  babe. 
She  had  her  love  affairs,  of  course,  but  they  still  smacked 
of  the  nursery.  The  thought  of  her  marrying  would  have 


i72  BEAUTY 

been  counted  outrageous.  Any  New  York  Romeo,  indeed, 
who  ran  away  with  a  girl  who  was  under  sixteen  would  have 
been  guilty  of  abduction  and  punishable  by  imprisonment. 

Nancy  confessed  to  twenty-two,  with  no  guaranty  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  count.  Her  father  would  as  soon  have 
attempted  to  carry  a  wildcat  to  the  altar  as  try  to  force  her 
to  marry  according  to  his  orders. 

A  parent's  wish,  indeed,  had  come  to  have  a  little  less 
than  no  influence  at  all  with  the  matrimonial  plans  of  the 
American  girl ;  parental  approval  served  as  a  slight  handicap 
to  the  suitor. 

And  this  is  all  for  the  best,  since  nothing  imaginable  could 
be  more  hideous  than  the  results  of  centuries  of  parental 
power  over  matrimony.  There  are  new  ways  enough  of 
heartbreak,  but  it  is  well  that  some  of  the  old  ways  are 
dead  and  gone. 

As  Nancy  came  downstairs  to  meet  Larrick  she  thought 
she  was  paying  a  sufficient  tribute  to  her  father  when  she 
stopped  in  at  the  library  (where  he  was  mulling  over  a  new 
invoice  of  first  editions  with  uncut  leaves)  and  kissed  him 
friendly. 

He  said,  "Just  coming  in?" 

She  said,  "Just  going  out  again." 

He  shook  his  poll  like  a  deposed  monarch  and  sighed, 
"Try  to  get  back  before  daylight." 

She  sighed:  "You  poor  old-fashioned  thing!  We  don't 
dance  all  night  the  way  you  and  George  Washington  did. 
The  musical  union  won't  let  us." 

He  smiled.     "You're  very  beautiful  and  very  precious." 

She  silenced  his  too  great  tenderness  with  a  hug,  and  ran. 

She  found  Larrick  so  handsome  and  so  smartly  groomed 
that  she  had  to  bring  him  down : 

"Oh,  looky  at  the  cowboy  in  his  bran'-new  store  clothes!" 

He  slumped  at  this,  having  no  margin  of  self-confidence; 
and  she  had  to  rescue  him. 

"You  really  are  beautiful.  I'm  stunned.  Bear  me  away 
in  your  swift  taxi,  whither  you  will." 

As  he  helped  her  into  his  cab  he  had  to  ask  her  where  she 
wanted  to  go. 


MISS    NANCY    FLEET  173 

"I  had  hoped  you  would  have  selected  a  lugger." 

"I  don't  know  any  luggers." 

"All  right,  the  Biltmore.  Art  Hickman's  there  with  his 
San  Francisco  band." 

As  soon  as  the  cab  started,  Larrick  did  the  expected, 
but  she  put  his  arm  away,  protesting: 

"Please  realize  that  I've  got  to  appear  in  public  in  these 
rags,  and  I  won't  be  rumpled.  You'll  have  to  hold  me  long 
enough  to  music.  Save  your  strength." 

She  loved  to  play  with  fire,  but  she  could  keep  her  hands 
from  it  when  it  endangered  appearances. 

The  elevator  at  the  Biltmore  took  them  up  nineteen 
stories  to  the  high  hall  throbbing  with  music  and  thronged 
with  dancers.  While  they  waited  outside  the  rope  for 
Nancy  to  be  recognized  and  led  to  a  table,  Larrick  watched 
and  wondered  (as  he  always  wondered  when  he  was  not 
dancing)  why  couples  permitted  themselves  to  be  seen 
dancing,  why  the  law  permitted  dancing  in  couples.  He  did 
not  wonder  at  all  that  the  Puritans  forbade  it  and  most  of  the 
preachers  denounced  it  in  terms  more  shocking  than  the 
dance  itself. 

But  the  moment  he  stepped  into  the  current  and  gathered 
Nancy  Fleet  to  his  breast  and  gave  himself  up  to  the  weird 
mood  of  letting  the  music  rule  his  heart  and  his  heart,  her 
feet  and  his  own,  and  their  di-une  body,  he  no  longer  won- 
dered why  people  danced.  He  almost  wondered  why  they 
ever  stopped  dancing. 

The  tunes  ranged  through  all  the  humors,  all  the  history 
of  flirtation  in  short  snatches  like  clandestine  meetings. 
There  were  musics  that  implied  dignity  of  approach,  com- 
pliment, invitation,  admiration,  advance,  retreat,  sarcasm, 
raillery,  flattery,  audacity,  devotion,  elopement,  and  passion 
to  a  honeymoon  fullness. 

Now  and  then  a  strangely  amorous  flute  played  by  drawing 
a  cord  added  its  plaintive  seduction  to  the  hankering  per- 
sistence of  the  homely  saxophone,  the  cave-man  trombone, 
the  sirupy  violin,  the  'cello  in  its  agony  of  desire,  the  hys- 
terical piano,  and  the  drummers'  dozen  cacophonies  that 
drove  off  any  lingering  demons  of  self-respect. 


i74  BEAUTY 

Larrick  shook  his  head  at  one  interval : 

"Gosh!  after  a  tune  like  that  and  the  way  some  of  these 
couples  take  it,  seems  like  to  me  the  only  thing  to  play  is  a 
weddin'  march,  and  play  it  quick." 

Nancy  was  not  shocked  as  he  had  hoped.  It  seemed 
almost  impossible  to  shock  these  women  up  here.  They 
had  put  off  mental  prudery  with  prudery  of  costume.  Yet 
they  kept  a  certain  delicacy  and  subtlety  about  them,  and 
it  was  clumsiness  of  audacity  that  gave  them  quickest 
offense. 

What  Nancy  may  have  thought  of  Larrick's  brutal  remark 
was  lost  in  her  real  shock: 

"  See  that  girl — the  one  in  cerise,  the  dizzy  one  just  beyond 
the —  Oh,  she's  gone  now." 

The  dance  was  resumed  and  she  explained  as  they  stepped 
into  it: 

"That's  the  girl  Roy  Coykendall  is  said  to  be  crazy  about. 
I  wonder  if  he's  with  her.  Let's  look  for  her.  She's  the 
girl  he  wants  to  marry  when  he  shakes  off  Louise." 

It  was  an  odd  pursuit,  winding  in  and  out  of  a  human 
jungle  that  moved  in  an  indescribable  eddy  of  eddies. 
They  turned  on  their  own  axis,  darted  in  and  out  of  crevices, 
collided,  crushed  ankles  and  toes,  and  had  their  own  crushed 
in  return.  Nancy  kept  twisting  to  descry  the  woman  she 
hunted.  Larrick's  heart  was  in  a  sick  excitement. 

There  was  a  kind  of  funeral  majesty  to  his  delight  now. 
It  might  well  be  that  he  should  find  Coykendall  and  have  to 
insult  him — kill  him,  even.  Then  he  would  be  dragged  away 
to  a  cell,  to  loneliness  lasting  for  months,  years,  perhaps,  and 
ending,  it  might  be,  in  the  electric  chair. 

He  was  under  the  slightest  of  obligations  to  avenge  a 
woman  he  had  never  met  upon  a  man  he  had  never  met,  at 
the  behest  of  a  woman  he  had  met  but  thrice.  Yet  of  such 
demands  the  history  of  knight-errantry  was  made. 

The  less  he  wanted  to  fight  Coykendall  the  more  shameful 
it  seemed  not  to.  He  danced  the  more  eagerly  now,  for  this 
might  be  his  last  dance  on  a  solid  floor  with  a  tender  woman 
in  his  arms. 


CHAPTER  X 

"T  1  THAT   cannot   be   said  can  be  sung."    And  what 

V  V    cannot  be  sung  can  be  danced. 

Larrick  had  never  danced  with  a  woman  like  Nancy  Fleet 
— so  beautiful,  so  sleek,  so  lightly,  yet  so  richly  clad,  so 
schooled  in  grace — so  unafraid. 

He  had  never  danced  to  such  music — the  dance  music  of 
dancing  musicians  who  played  the  fool  or  the  satyr  or  the 
dreadful  dreamer,  while  they  suckled  the  saxophone,  fondled 
the  violin,  and  breathed  into  an  uncanny  trombone  that 
laughed  ha-ha-ha-ha! 

Let  those  who  declare  the  dance  to  be  ungodly  and  unholy 
and  against  God's  will  explain  why  it  is  so  indomitable, 
so  immemorial,  so  universal. 

Back  in  King  David's  time  his  wife  mocked  him  because 
he  danced,  and  it  is  solemnly  recorded  that  the  Lord  made 
her  childless  for  her  lack  of  sympathy.  Dancing,  indeed, 
always  had  a  kinship  with  that  love  and  those  rites  whose 
blessings  and  risks  concern  the  getting  of  children. 

As  soldiers  practice  and  perfect  themselves  for  war  in 
sham  battles,  so  the  dance  is  perhaps  a  kind  of  sham  marriage. 

In  Shakespeare's  day,  old  Stubbes,  in  his  Anatomy  of 
Abuses,  said  that  dancing  was  "unpossible  to  be  good."  He 
traced  it  to  its  source:  "S.  Chrisostom  saith  plainly  that  it 
sprang  from  the  teates  of  the  Devil's  brest,  from  whence  all 
mischeef  els  dooth  flow."  And  again  he  thunders,  "No 
man  (saith  a  certain  heathen  Writer)  if  he  be  sober,  daunceth, 
except  he  be  mad." 

And  in  1920  the  Reverend  Doctor  Straton,  New  York's 
most  zealous  whip,  declared  that  dancing  ought  to  be  pro- 
hibited as  well  as  liquor.  He  called  for  the  complete  de- 
struction of  the  abomination. 

How  venerable,  how  primeval  are  these  old  excitements 


i76  BEAUTY 

and  their  counterexcitements !  (And  I  am  willing  to  bet  any 
man  alive  in  the  glorious-infamous  year  of  A. D.  2920  six  copies 
of  this  classic  work  against  six  copies  of  the  worst  work  of 
the  cheapest  sensationalist  of  his  day  that  in  2920  the 
older  dancers  will  be  complaining  of  the  dances  of  the  day 
as  "not  modest  and  graceful  like  the  dances  of  A.D.  2910" 
(which  the  older  dancers  of  2910  will  have  denounced  as 
lacking  the  modesty  and  grace  of  the  dances  of  2900,  and  so 
on  backward  in  crawfish  progression) — also  that  the  popular 
satirical  preachers  will  be  denouncing  the  whole  craze  for 
dancing  as  an  abomination,  and  demanding  that  the  police 
stop  it  at  once.  Some  of  the  most  liberal  preachers  of  2920 
will,  however,  say  that  they  would  not  object  to  dancing  if 
it  could  be  conducted  in  the  stately  and  respectable  manner 
of  the  classic  jazz  and  the  innocent  shimmy  of  1920 — but 
that  the  new  wriggles  are  intolerable. 

(If  I  lose  this  bet  the  winner  is  entitled  to  anything  he  can 
collect.) 

In  the  meanwhile,  in  the  Biltmore,  young  Mr.  Larrick 
and  young  Miss  Fleet  were  not  thinking  of  ancient  or  of 
future  comments  on  the  dance. 

They  were  hardly  thinking  of  the  present  moment.  Their 
hearts  were  too  dizzy  for  thinking.  They  were  simply  exploit- 
ing their  emotions,  in  the  mystic,  inexplicable  sway  of  rhythm. 

Millions  of  men  and  women  in  the  world  were  dancing  at 
that  hour.  As  the  earth  rolled  round  into  the  night  the 
dancers  rose  like  fireflies,  flashing  their  cool  fires  in  the 
ecstasy  of  blazing — like  ants  taking  on  wings  for  a  brief 
nuptial  flight  in  clouds,  ceasing  to  crawl  or  toil,  and  soaring 
in  air  in  wild  revels.  The  old  fireless  fireflies  and  the  ants 
past  their  wing-time  doubtless  were  horrified,  were  shamed, 
and  could  not  understand. 

But  dancing,  like  all  other  human  raptures  (and  pains  and 
activities),  is  past  understanding. 

It  is  rapture  that  the  people  want;  must  have,  will  have; 
and  they  find  it  in  innumerable  inscrutable  ways.  One 
rapture  is  as  blind  and  as  dangerous  and  to  its  enemy  as 
ridiculous  as  another. 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  177 

The  martyr  at  the  stake  found  himself  among  roses. 
The  hermit  in  his  cell  found  voluptuousness  in  his  hair  shirt, 
his  whip,  and  his  famine,  and  turned  in  disgust  from  the 
devil-sent  naked  visions  to  the  good  sharp  rocks  of  salvation. 
The  nun  found  her  dull  cell  all  alight  with  the  presence  of  the 
bridegroom  Christ  and  in  His  blood  found  warmth  and 
wedlock. 

Each  of  these  enraptured  ones  found  preparation  for 
the  future  life  in  the  earthly  crisis  of  emotion;  pain  Here 
meant  so  much  bliss  There  that  pain  became  bliss,  disgrace 
glory,  and  crucifixion  election. 

So  the  dancers,  it  may  be,  looking  forward  only  to  their 
earthly  future,  seeking  hither  and  yon  the  mate  of  mates, 
try  all  and  their  arts,  and  try  all  arts,  in  order  to  perfect 
themselves  for  earthly  bliss. 

The  dance  brings  rapture  only  to  those  to  whom  it  brings 
rapture.  But  to  them  it  means  that  strength  and  beauty 
embrace  and  revolve  about  each  other;  one  commands, 
one  obeys ;  one  pursues,  one  flies,  or  indulges  in  the  pretense — 
and  so  they  play  about  the  brink  of  entire  union,  mimic 
communion.  And  all  this  in  a  realm  of  music,  and  all 
heightened  by  the  interaction  of  mob  multiplication. 

Larrick  was  too  wise  to  analyze.  He  enjoyed.  He 
drained  the  beaker  instead  of  asking  for  its  chemistry,  its 
origin  and  reactions.  His  regret  at  the  danger  of  en- 
countering Coykendall  on  such  a  night  only  made  his 
beatitude  more  poignant. 

Clasping  Nancy  as  straitly  as  bronze  is  embraced  by  the 
mold,  he  murmured  into  her  ear: 

"Don't  you  love  me  now?  I  can't  help  loving  you. 
Don't  you  love  me — now?" 

She  laughed  a  most  enamored  laugh,  but  she  said: 

"Now — yes.  I'd  love  anybody  that  danced  to  this  music 
without  losing  time." 

"Me,  I  mean,"  he  pleaded.  "Don't  you  love  just  only 
me  for  forever?" 

"No!"  she  answered,  with  absolute  conviction,  but  with 
a  more  maddening  surrender. 

It  seemed  strange  that  such  perversity  could  exist,  and 


178  BEAUTY 

Larrick  was  frantic  that  a  verbal  denial  should  be  her  only 
denial. 

The  music  stopped  just  in  time  to  restore  him  to  sanity 
and  harsh  reality.  He  was  atrociously  hot.  The  collars 
of  the  most  fashionable  men  were  a  ridiculous  mess  of  limp 
starch  and  linen. 

The  whitest  women  were  scarlet  and  streaming  with 
sweat — not  with  perspiration,  but  with  more  or  less  "honest 
sweat."  They  came  back  to  their  tables  gasping,  mopping, 
fanning  themselves  with  handkerchiefs  that  they  wrung  out 
and  stared  at  ashamed — ashamed  of  handkerchiefs  and  so 
little  else! 

Nancy,  like  the  cat  she  was,  struck  the  earth  on  her  feet, 
but  Larrick  came  down  from  the  clouds  in  a  maze. 

She  was  already  swearing  at  so  paltry  a  thing  as  the 
weather.  She  was  glad  she  was  leaving  New  York  on  the 
morrow. 

Larrick  was  afraid  to  look  at  her  or  anybody  else  in  that 
community,  suddenly  changed  from  linked  angels  to  humid 
citizens.  But  Nancy  said: 

"There's  the  girl — Coykendall's  pet — at  the  third  table 
— just  burying  her  nose  in  a  loganberry  highball.  Coyken- 
dall  is  not  with  her.  That's  not  even  his  kind  of  a 
crowd." 

It  did  not  matter  much  now.  Larrick  would  have  en- 
joyed murdering  somebody.  But  he  said,  for  politeness: 

"Maybe  she's  got  tired  of  him  and  chucked  him." 

"What's  more  probable  is  he's  chucked  her.  Roy 
couldn't  be  true  to  one  corespondent  long  enough  to  get 
her  name  in  the  affidavits." 

Larrick  began  to  lose  interest  in  this  man.  There  would 
be  mighty  little  comfort  in  going  to  the  chair  for  mashing 
up  a  humming-bird  (that  "germ  of  alibi,"  as  Emily  Dickin- 
son called  it). 

Your  noble  crime  demands  a  noble  victim.  To  slay  a 
dragon,  kill  a  Goliath  with  a  pastoral  nigger  shooter,  punc- 
ture a  tyrant  or  macerate  him  with  a  bomb,  to  strike  down 
what  is  technically  known  as  "the  despoiler  of  a  home,"  or 
to  intervene  with  the  lightning  from  a  pistol's  muzzle  in . 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  179 

revenge  of  a  woman's  honor — yes,  that  would  be  to  collect 
enough  glory  in  advance  to  pay  for  any  fate. 

But  to  chase  this  dragon  fly  (a  "snake  feeder"  was  what 
Larrick  called  a  dragon  fly)  through  the  marsh,  from  one 
cattail  to  another — no,  thank  you!  well,  hardly,  just  as 
much  obliged,  but  none  o'  that  in  mine  if  it's  all  the  same  to 
you! 

Worse  yet,  just  as  the  next  dance  started  and  the  saxophone 
gurgled  a  particularly  cynical  invitation  to  lay  all  scruple 
aside  and  just  as  Larrick  and  Nancy  had  come  to  a  perfect 
understanding,  some  one  stopped  them  and  insisted  on  cut- 
ting in. 

Larrick  had  not  been  subjected  to  this  Sabine  atrocity 
before  and  he  felt  instinctively  for  his  empty  hip  pocket. 
He  hit  somebody's  else  hip  and  was  knocked  aside  by  a 
dancing  couple  who  glared  at  him  for  impeding  the  traffic. 

By  the  time  he  had  dodged  to  the  side  lines  Nancy  was 
lost  in  the  melee.  He  waited  till  she  came  round  to  cut 
back  or  commit  murder,  but  when  he  caught  sight  of  her 
lost  in  an  interplanetary  space,  and  twin-starring  to  the 
music  of  the  spheres  with  as  apparent  an  abandonment  as 
she  had  revealed  in  his  arms,  he  cursed  the  dance  with 
the  horror  of  a  Methody  parson,  and  vowed  that  he  would 
never  take  Nancy  seriously  again. 

He  was  not  yet  ready  for  the  community  of  property,  the 
polyandry  and  polygamy  and  polywoggery  of  the  dance 
world. 

He  went  to  his  table  and  outsulked  Achilles.  Nancy 
drifted  by  him  and  appealed  to  him  with  silent  cries  of, 
"Help!  help!"  for  the  man  who  had  cut  in  was  an  irregular 
bounder.  But  Larrick  let  her  drown. 

When  she  came  back  at  last  and  thanked  the  cavalier 
ever  so  much,  and  so  dismissed  him,  she  saw  how  deeply 
Larrick  was  hurt  by  her  desertion,  and  it  pleased  her  to  the 
depths  of  her  soul.  He  was  jealous  of  her!  jealous  of  one 
little  dance!  Could  it  be  that  he  really  loved  her  with  the 
real  love  she  had  been  searching  for? — searching  like  Isaac 
Newton  picking  up  one  shell  after  another  and  dropping 
it  for  the  next. 


i8o  BEAUTY 

The  possibility  was  so  fairy-story-like  that  she  could  not 
believe  it.  At  least  she  must  experiment  some  more. 

That  was  her  mistake — one  of  her  numberless  mistakes  in 
life.  Larrick  was  not  one  of  those  who  could  be  won  by 
the  hot-and-cold  treatment,  the  now-you've-got-me  and 
now-you've-not  method. 

Her  next  trial  of  his  emotion  was  particularly  unfortunate. 
She  reached  out  into  the  passing  current  and  seized  a  woman 
by  the  arm  and  said: 

"Connie,  I  want  to  dance  with  your  beautiful  husband 
and  I  want  you  to  dance  with  Mr.  Larrick." 

Connie  was  willing  and  so  was  her  husband.  Larrick 
was  frightened  to  a  panic.  The  music  broke  loose.  He 
rose  and  Mrs.  Connie  Whoevershewas  clamped  herself  to 
him  with  a  vim,  vigor,  and  swooning  intimacy  that  terrified 
Larrick  out  of  his  wits  and  off  his  feet. 

He  had  always  said  that  if  a  vampire  ever  appeared  in 
real  life  every  man  who  saw  her  would  run.  But  he  could 
not  run.  He  could  not  dance.  Neither  could  Connie. 
She  substituted  a  democratic  cordiality  for  a  sense  of 
rhythm. 

Larrick  was  swept  into  one  of  those  appalling  jams  that 
turn  a  corner  of  a  dance  into  the  imitation  of  a  packed 
Subway  express  car  scooting  round  a  curve.  In  this  human 
jelly  Larrick  could  not  tell  whose  legs  he  was  dancing  on. 
He  knew  only  that  they  were  not  his  own. 

Connie  did  not  care.  She  loved  to  be  suffocated  and 
would  have  cooed  to  a  boa  constrictor  a  discouraging  en- 
couragement. Eventually  Larrick  and  his  Portuguese  lady- 
of-war  floated  out  of  the  congested  district  into  a  little  freer 
space,  but  Larrick  could  not  come  to  a  working  agreement, 
either  with  the  music's  syncopation  or  with  Connie's  syncope. 

As  he  joggled  and  raged  he  saw  Nancy  twirling  by  in  the 
arms  of  Connie's  husband.  The  man,  instead  of  looking 
bullets  at  Larrick,  looked  away.  Nancy,  who  had  caught 
sight  of  Larrick,  suppressed  her  laughter  at  his  plight,  and 
put  on,  for  his  peculiar  torment,  a  look  of  shameless  con- 
tentment, closed  her  eyes,  set  her  chin  on  her  partner's 
shoulder,  and  pretended  to  be  a  lost  soul. 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  181 

Larrick  voted  her  one  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  and 
whipsawed  Connie  to  the  table  where  she  found  him.  He 
told  her: 

"I  got  no  right  dancin'  with  an  artist  like  you  are.  I 
only  had  two  lessons." 

Connie  was  for  teaching  him,  but  he  thought  he  had 
learned  more  from  her  already  than  anybody  but  her  husband 
ought  to  know. 

Her  husband  had  led  Nancy  as  bad  a  dance  as  she  deserved. 
He  and  his  wife  were  as  wicked  as  they  could  be,  technically 
or  domestically. 

When  Nancy  limped  back  to  the  table  and  froze  out  Con- 
nie and  her  mate  she  said: 

"  I  deserved  that.  That  beast  has  the  grace  and  efficiency 
of  a  caterpillar  tractor." 

Larrick  did  not  mention  his  clever  intuition  that  she  was 
slandering  the  man  to  hide  the  delight  in  him  she  had 
plainly  felt  when  Larrick  saw  her  with  her  eyes  shut.  He 
simply  put  in  for  himself  a  disclaimer  of  similar  enjoyment. 

"What's  that  wife  of  his  in  the  daytime — a  massooze? 
I  tell  you  if  I'd  'a'  had  any  rheumatism  anywheres — well, 
I  wouldn't  have  it  now." 

Nancy  rejoiced  in  the  audacity  of  this.  "Aren't  we 
getting  well  acquainted?"  she  said,  and  rose  for  the  next 
dance. 

But  Larrick  had  lost  his  first  fine,  careless  rapture.  The 
crowd  had  increased.  He  had  to  plan  his  steps  in  advance, 
and  every  time  he  planned  a  step  somebody  stood  on  his 
foot  till  he  lost  the  beat,  or  hooked  it  and  carried  it  past 
the  point  of  return.  He  had  lost  confidence  in  Nancy  as 
well  as  himself.  There  was  nothing  very  sublime  about 
sweeping  her  into  a  delirium  that  he  had  seen  her  share  with 
two  other  men.  He  was  not  expert  enough  to  dance  with- 
out inspiration  or  to  dominate  his  companion.  The  bout 
was  a  total  failure,  and  he  ordered  much  food  as  an  excuse 
for  not  venturing  out  again. 

Nancy  was  keen  enough  to  see  that  she  had  tried  the 
wrong  experiment  with  this  simple  soul.  She  saw  that  he 
was  genuinely,  pitiably  wounded  by  her  apparent  promis- 


182  BEAUTY 

cuity.  She  had  not  stimulated  him  to  jealousy,  but  only 
alienated  him  by  cheapening  herself. 

That  was  the  kind  of  love  from  the  kind  of  man  she 
wanted.  She  was  satisfied  that  Larrick  might  be  the  very 
being  she  had  despaired  of  finding. 

This  enthralled  her,  confused  her.  She  became  a  little 
girl  again  with  illusions  and  romantic  notions.  But  it  was 
one  thing  to  be  convinced  and  another  to  convince  her  man 
that  she  was  his  woman. 

She  could  hardly  throw  her  arms  about  his  neck  and  cry : 
"We  have  found  each  other.  I  am  not  what  you  think 
me.  I  am  a  sweet  young  innocent  who  knows  nothing  of 
the  world  or  of  passion,  and  wishes  to  know  only  what  you 
wish  me  to  know." 

She  could  say  none  of  that,  for  it  was  not  true.  She  knew 
about  all  there  was  to  know,  and  could  not  pretend  to  a  hypo- 
critical ignorance.  She  would  despise  a  husband  who  would 
expect  to  get  a  wife  with  a  mind  like  a  sheet  of  blank  paper. 
But  she  did  want  a  decent  husband  who  wanted  a  decent- 
intentioned  wife,  and  she  liked  Larrick  better  than  any 
man  she  knew.  She  loved  him  for  his  bewildered  reaction 
to  her  acid  test. 

But  how  was  she  to  explain  herself?  She  had  not  found 
the  way  by  the  time  they  had  poked  their  supper  to  bits. 
When  he  implied  a  reluctance  to  dance  any  more  she  was 
glad,  because  she  thought  that  they  could  be  alone  in  the 
taxicab.  Perhaps  he  would  propose  a  long  excursion  through 
Central  Park's  deep  gardens  and  out  along  the  moony 
grandeurs  of  Riverside  Drive. 

But  he  did  not  propose  such  an  excursion.  His  arm  even 
made  no  excursion  about  her  yearning  shoulder,  and  when 
they  reached  her  house  he  handed  her  out  as  if  she  were  his 
grandmother — very  carefully,  lest  she  break  in  two,  but  not 
at  all  reluctantly. 

At  the  door  his  sad  eyes  found  hers  inexplicably  sad. 
His  hand  found  hers  strangely  strong  as  they  clenched. 
He  felt  an  impulse  to  seize  her,  but  the  moonlight  was 
brilliant  on  the  doorway,  and  the  taxicab  driver  did  not 
know  enough  to  pretend  not  to  watch. 


MISS   NANCY   FLEET  183 

"  Good  night  ? "  she  said,  with  a  kind  of  inquiring  inflection. 

"Good  night!"  he  groaned,  thinking  of  might-have-beens 
with  all  regret. 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  made  a  bitter  moue  at 
fate  and  closed  the  door  on  him  as  on  another  dream  from 
which  she  had  wakened  at  midnight  with  a  long  night  still 
ahead  of  her. 

He  dashed  down  the  steps  and  into  the  cab,  damning  those 
modern  dances  and  the  ruin  they  make  of  these  modern 
women. 


Book  IV 
CLELIA 


CHAPTER   I 

A3  Larrick  found  a  luxury  in  the  most  commonplace 
features  of  New  York  life,  such  as  rain  and  wealth  and 
throngs,  so  he  found  commonplaces  many  of  the  things 
that  excite  the  natives. 

One  of  these  latter  was  the  alleged  "hot  wave"  that 
broke  over  the  town  the  next  morning  and  rilled  the  citizens 
with  dread. 

The  winter  of  1919-20  had  been  extraordinary  for  length 
and  bitterness.  Storm  after  storm  had  added  ice  upon  ice 
in  the  streets.  Labor  to  remove  it  was  difficult  to  secure, 
and  appallingly  high  priced  (common  workmen  were  notori- 
ously wearing  silk  shirts  at  twenty  dollars  apiece,  while 
the  aristocracy  were  returning  to  madras  at  five). 

The  police  department  had  to  arm  itself  with  pick  and 
shovel  to  clean  certain  main  highways  and  the  street-car 
companies  turned  their  motormen  and  conductors  into 
street  cleaners  in  an  almost  vain  effort  to  clear  the  track 
and  the  third-rail  slots,  which  had  become  solid  marble  with 
frozen  water. 

Narrow  passages  between  ridges  of  jagged  snow  were  cut 
along  Fifth  Avenue  and  Broadway,  but  the  side  streets  were 
almost  impassable.  The  flame  throwers  used  in  the  war  were 
called  into  play  against  masses  that  knocked  a  pick  aside, 
and  dismal  bonfires  were  built  everywhere  in  a  poor  effort 
to  melt  what  could  not  be  chopped. 

Rich  people  were  forced  to  walk  to  the  shops  and  even  to 
the  opera.  New  York  became  pedestrian  for  the  nonce. 
Those  who  rode  the  mountain  trails  were  knocked  about  in 
their  limousines  and  taxicabs  till  they  were  black  and  blue. 
Broken  springs  and  wheels  sent  motors  of  every  sort  in 
myriads  to  the  overcrowded  repair  shops. 

13 


i88  BEAUTY 

The  protracted  winter  was  followed  by  a  long  wet  spring 
and  a  belated  summer. 

But  the  weather  by  matching  extremes  maintains  a  rough 
average  and  the  deferred  hot  spell  came  down  with  a  ven- 
geance when  at  length  it  came. 

This  heat  that  won  front-page  attention  in  the  news- 
papers and  set  the  populace  into  a  panic  of  flight  to  the 
beaches,  the  hills,  and  the  mountains  was  so  trifling  to 
Larrick  that  he  was  amused  and  amazed. 

He  had  fought  bronchos  and  roped  steers  in  a  shadeless, 
waterless  realm  where  the  thermometers  recorded  135 
degrees.  It  astounded  him  to  find  New  Yorkers  terrified 
at  a  mark  of  90.  For  the  streets  were  canons  of  deep 
shadow,  the  Subway  was  a  cool  tunnel,  and  electric  fans 
whirred  in  almost  every  interior.  At  every  corner  there  was 
a  hydrant  whence  the  street  cleaners  shot  gushing  floods 
along  the  pavements.  At  night  gangs  washed  down  the 
streets  with  torrents  of  water.  Certain  streets  this  year 
were  not  only  put  aside  for  playgrounds  for  children,  but 
were  adorned  with  shower  baths,  where  multitudes  of 
human  sparrows  splashed  and  squealed  in  a  next-to-nothing 
of  clothes. 

The  saloons  that  had  marked  nearly  every  corner  in  the 
business  districts  had  almost  completely  disappeared,  but 
the  soda  fountains  had  multiplied  and  men  who  had  been 
wont  to  dally  over  their  beers  and  gin  rickeys  humbled 
themselves  to  crowd  in  with  the  women  and  girls  along  the 
marble  counters  and  to  shock  their  gullets  with  chilled 
sweet  stuffs  of  infinite  variety. 

Frewin  asked  Larrick  to  have  luncheon  with  him  at  a 
club. 

He  ordered  a  hot-weather  meal — a  "cocktail"  of  chilled 
grapefruit,  a  soup  of  chicken  okra  frozen  to  a  jelly,  a  platter 
of  cold,  sliced  meats,  a  cold  salad,  iced  coffee,  and  an  ice. 
It  was  a  substantial  meal,  but  it  entered  cold. 

Frewin  was  not  a  believer  in  prohibition.  Neither  was 
anybody  else  that  Larrick  met.  The  most  that  he  heard 
in  its  favor  was  that  the  disappearance  of  the  saloon  was  a 
good  thing.  It  was  bitterly  proclaimed  that  beers  and 


CLELIA  189 

light  wines  ought  to  be  permitted,  though  nearly  everybody 
that  pleaded  for  beer  and  light  wines  was  possessed  of  a 
stock  of  whisky  and  gin. 

Yet  in  spite  of  the  national  grumbling,  nobody  in  power 
dared  to  advocate  the  repeal  of  the  Eighteenth  Amendment. 
Neither  of  the  presidential  candidates  could  be  forced  into 
an  advocacy  of  such  a  step,  though  it  wai  whispered  that  both 
were  in  favor  of  it. 

The  clubs,  like  the  hotels,  had  been  forced  to  a  change  of 
life.  Relying  hitherto  for  their  profits  on  the  receipts  from 
their  bars,  they  had  to  look  elsewhere  for  their  funds.  At 
first  the  clubs  had  installed  lockers  and  the  members  had 
loaded  them  with  provisions  against  the  long  drought.  But 
the  lockers  had  been  declared  illegal  and  ousted.  The 
desperate  members  were  left  with  no  recourse  but  the 
pocket  flask,  itself  outlawed. 

Many  of  the  clubs  set  apart  a  secret  inner  chamber  where 
members  might  mix  their  own  drinks.  In  some  a  servant 
furnished  such  ingredients  as  were  nonalcoholic.  But  the 
ceremonies  were  as  mystic  and  as  solemn  as  the  rites  of  a 
forbidden  religion,  and  the  man  who  gave  another  a  sip 
from  his  flask  was  counted  as  Samaritan  as  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
offering  his  canteen  to  a  wounded  soldier. 

Larrick's  luncheon  with  Frewin  was  preceded  by  an 
invitation  into  such  an  occult  sanctum.  The  toast  was  a 
bitter,  "And  they  call  this  a  free  country!" 

At  the  table  Frewin  was  in  a  torment  of  heat,  for  which  he 
never  blamed  his  liquor. 

"Pack  up  your  things  and  come  out  of  this  hell  hole," 
said  Frewin.  ' '  There  won't  be  a  soul  in  town  by  to-morrow. ' ' 

Larrick  was  innocent  enough  to  take  this  literally.  What 
did  he  know  of  the  habits  of  these  peculiar  people? 

Frewin  modified  his  phrase: 

"Of  course  millions  of  poor  devils  will  have  to  stay  here, 
but  nobody  will  that  can  get  away." 

Larrick  thought  of  Miss  Fleet  and  her  yachting  flight. 
Now  that  she  was  gone,  New  York  was  an  empty  town  to 
him.  He  might  as  well  kill  a  week  with  Frewin,  until  he 
could  make  for  Newport  and  meet  her  there. 


BEAUTY 

Thinking  of  loneliness  of  his  heart  without  its  flame, 
he  was  reminded  of  Frewin 's  love  troubles. 

He  was  rash  enough  to  ask  about  Clelia. 

"How  about  that  Miss  Blakeney  of  yours?  Have  you 
made  up  with  her  yet? " 

Frewin  winced  and  blushed: 

"No,  she  won't  see  me.  She  won't  talk  to  me  on  the 
telephone.  I  sent  the  little  rat  a  note  and  she  returned  it 
unopened.  She  had  the  nerve  to  write  on  the  envelope: 
'This  was  evidently  meant  for  the  other  lady.  I  haven't 
dared  to  peek  in.  I'm  far  too  young,  tee-hee!'  She's  gone 
up  to  the  country.  Her  father's  country  place  isn't  far 
from  ours.  I've  got  to  show  dad  a  little  attention,  as  I'm 
broke  again.  So  I'm  off  to  the  farm,  and  you're  coming 
along.  Mother  told  me  not  to  fail  to  bring  you.  Clelia 
will  probably  think  I'm  on  her  trail,  but  I'm  not.  I'm 
off  that  young  lady  for  keeps." 

Beneath  the  gray  ashes  of  this  scorn  Larrick  was  sure 
that  there  was  a  smoldering  and  a  burning  that  fed  on  the 
very  pride  that  would  have  extinguished  it. 

In  the  enforced  idleness  of  his  own  heart,  divorced  for  a 
time  from  the  Nancy  Fleet,  he  felt  a  keen  curiosity  to  see 
and  know  this  peculiar  Clelia,  who  could  torment  so  insuf- 
ferably so  sophisticated,  so  resourceful  a  man  as  Frewin, 
whom  Larrick  thought  of  rather  as  a  natural-born  "lady 
killer"  than  as  a  love-lorn  swain  whimpering  at  the  heels 
of  a  mocking  girl. 

Clelia  had  run  into  him  in  the  dark  and  fled  past  him 
laughing,  but  almost  undescried.  He  could  not  foresee 
that  she  would  play  will-o'-the-wisp  to  him,  too,  and  en- 
tangle him  in  a  bog  of  remorse,  of  desire  and  despair. 


CHAPTER  II 

FREWIN  sent  Larrick  back  to  his  hotel  to  pack  his 
trunk  and  his  suit  cases  under  instructions  to  meet 
him  at  the  Grand  Central.  He  cautioned  him  about  the 
hour.  The  railroads  were  run  on  sun-time,  which  those 
who  make  a  religion  of  everything  that  is  long  enough  es- 
tablished persisted  in  calling  God's  time.  But  during  the 
summer  the  city  advanced  the  clocks  an  hour  so  that  the 
offices  and  shops  would  set  their  flocks  free  for  that  much 
more  of  daylight  recreation.  Even  this  was  a  concession  to 
custom,  for  it  would  have  been  as  impossible  to  persuade 
town  folk  to  get  up  and  go  to  work  an  hour  earlier  without 
changing  the  clock  as  it  was  impossible  to  persuade  the 
farmers  that  the  daylight-saving  fashion  was  not  an  attack 
on  their  sacred  rights. 

Larrick  found  the  Grand  Central  an  enormous  hive  in 
full  swarm,  bustling,  darting,  clustering  for  the  flight. 

Frewin  met  him  at  the  circle  of  the  information  bureau, 
where  amazing  scholars  in  train  mathematics  answered 
questions  of  every  sort  with  incredible  calm  and  rapidity. 
In  the  chair  car  Frewin  found  a  cluster  of  men  and  women 
friends.  Next  to  the  onslaught  of  the  heat,  the  favorite 
topic  was  politics.  The  women  had  won  the  national  vote 
at  last  and  would  cast  their  first  ballot  for  President  in  the 
coming  November. 

An  entire  sex  had  just  come  of  age  after  a  hundred  and 
forty-four  years  of  existence  in  a  Republic  founded  on 
universal  equality  and  after,  perhaps,  a  million  years  of  life 
on  a  planet  where  it  had  held  at  least  equal  sway  with  man 
in  almost  every  activity. 

Some  of  the  gayest  and  prettiest  of  the  women  had  been 
famous  stump  speakers  and  were  entering  political  politics 
with  all  the  zest  they  had  shown  for  every  other  sort  of 
politics. 


i92  BEAUTY 

A  few  men  were  still  afraid  that  women  would  let  their 
emotions  rule  them  instead  of  their  reason!  Which  is  one 
of  the  stupidest  jokes  mankind  has  ever  unwittingly  com- 
mitted— as  if  males  had  ever  ruled  their  world  reasonably; 
as  if  they  were  not  now  hopelessly  divided  on  every  national 
and  international  question. 

The  next  election  would  differ  from  the  others  in  no 
respect  except  that  the  number  of  voters  would  be  about 
doubled,  and  that  women  would  add  their  prejudices,  whims, 
taboos,  fads,  and  emotions  to  those  of  the  equally,  if  dif- 
ferently, foolish  men.  Chaos  would  be  added  to  chaos  with- 
out making  it  perceptibly  more  confused, 

But  at  least  one  ugly  atrocity,  one  sublime  asininity  would 
be  removed  from  the  Republic's  life,  and  malekind  would 
cease  to  deny  the  privilege  of  the  polls  to  the  mothers,  wives, 
and  daughters  whose  love,  whose  loyalty,  whose  beauty, 
charm,  wisdom,  and  welfare  were  vital  to  the  dignity, 
prosperity,  and  worthwhileness  of  the  nation. 

And  this  world-rocking  revolution  had  been  managed  with 
no  visible  change  in  the  face  of  things.  Women  were  more 
womanly  than  ever,  freed  of  the  corral.  Girls  had  more  to 
live  for,  and  the  word  "home,"  losing  all  hint  of  harem  or 
cage,  became  a  dearer  and  a  sweeter  word. 

The  train  made  few  stops  till  it  had  passed  White  Plains. 
At  every  station  thereafter  a  mob  of  motors  waited.  At 
every  station  there  was  a  scurry  of  sallies  from  the  train 
and  onsets  from  the  platform,  hilarity,  kisses,  hugs.  It 
was  Larrick's  first  glimpse  of  the  country  life  of  the  New 
Yorkers. 

He  was  dazed  by  its  lack  of  affectation  or  pomposity. 
There  were  beauty,  wealth,  grace,  sophistication,  but  there 
were  also  welcome,  the  glad  reunion  of  families,  the  warm 
ingathering  of  guests.  All  the  languor,  boredom,  indiffer- 
ence of  the  rich  that  he  had  heard  of  were  dramatically 
absent.  He  could  see  no  difference  between  the  greetings 
of  these  swells  and  the  shabby  poor  at  the  Southern  depots, 
except  that  the  wives  and  children  here  were  better  dressed 
and  the  habit  of  beauty  had  increased  their  comeliness. 

Larrick  was  rapidly  being  contaminated  by  contact  with 


CLELIA  '193 

wealth  to  the  appalling  belief  that  wealth  has  its  good 
qualities,  the  qualities  of  its  very  defects.  There  are  certain 
priceless  things  it  cannot  buy,  but  countless  things  worth 
having  that  it  can. 

It  came  to  Larrick  as  a  startling  discovery  that  this 
wealth  thing  so  much  denounced  would  not  have  remained 
an  eternal  goal  of  human  ambition  if  it  conferred  no  benefits 
on  those  who  joined  it.  He  realized  that  many  men  had 
won  a  noble  wealth  nobly  while  many  men  had  earned  an 
ignoble  poverty  by  ignobly  disguising  their  lazinesses  as 
honesties. 

Frewin  was  met  at  his  station  by  a  family  car.  It  ran 
through  the  village  shops  and  a  cluster  of  modest  homes  out 
across  the  hills  to  the  large  estates.  The  roads  were  fine, 
the  walls  well  mended,  the  entrance  gates  grandiose,  but 
hospitable.  Glimpses  of  houses  and  barns  showed  them 
to  be  stately  beyond  the  usual  reach  of  farmstead  life,  but 
everywhere  the  one  predominant  desire  was  plain:  to  keep 
Nature  herself — at  her  best,  indeed,  without  the  scars  and 
horrors  of  the  battlegrounds  of  plant  and  tree  wars,  but 
always  Nature.  These  rich  folk  came  into  the  country  to 
get  the  country  and  to  be  at  ease.  Yet  Larrick  had  always 
read  the  contrary. 

He  began  to  realize  that  even  the  fiction  writers  lie. 

He  fell  timid  suddenly  as  the  car  turned  from  the  highroad 
into  a  private  drive  between  two  massive  gates.  They 
warned  him  that  he  was  about  to  confront  splendor.  The 
road  was  walled  with  a  green-velvet  masonry  of  trees  and 
shrubs,  with  flashes  of  sward  in  broken  places,  and  gleams 
of  flower  patches,  a  tumbling  stream,  a  great  swimming  pool, 
a  house  like  a  mountain,  a  delectable  mountain;  then  a 
further  dash  through  a  green-and-white  grove  of  shapely 
and  shimmering  birches. 

The  car  drew  up  with  a  sharp  stop  at  a  woman's  cry. 
Larrick  was  thrown  forward.  As  he  readjusted  himself  he 
saw  a  large  woman  in  a  great  hat  waving  from  a  thicket  of 
tall  roses.  She  brandished  a  pair  of  huge  shears  and  she 
might  have  been  one  of  the  Fates,  but  Frewin  said: 

"There's  mother  now." 


i94  BEAUTY 

He  jumped  out,  motioned  Larrick  to  follow,  and  sent  the 
car  on  to  the  house  with  the  baggage. 

In  spite  of  Frewin's  statements  of  how  eager  his  father 
and  mother  were  to  meet  the  savior  of  their  prodigal  son, 
something  had  always  prevented  their  entertaining  Larrick 
till  now. 

It  was  Larrick's  fortune,  therefore,  to  encounter  the 
magnate  and  the  grande  dame,  not  in  a  palace,  but  on  a  farm. 
It  was  as  unlike  the  bleak  ranch  in  Brewster  as  anything 
could  be,  but  he  found  that  the  Frewins,  father  and  mother, 
had  not  lost  their  hearts  or  their  simplicity  in  the  depths  of 
their  luxury.  They  reminded  him  of  Pa  and  Ma  Milman 
and  they  greeted  him  with  as  warm  a  hospitality. 

Mrs.  Frewin  was  caught  in  her  garden,  snipping  off  dead 
roses,  whisking  amorous  rose  bugs  from  the  petals,  in 
coupled  scores,  and  quarreling  with  an  equally  opinionated 
old  gardener. 

After  embracing  and  scolding  her  son,  she  tore  off  her 
gloves  and  pressed  Larrick's  hand,  stared  at  him,  then  thrust 
her  arm  about  his  neck,  drew  his  head  down,  and  kissed  him 
on  both  cheeks. 

"You  blessed  boy!"  she  cooed.  "If  it  hadn't  been  for 
you,  what  would  life  have  been  worth  to  me?  It  must  have 
been  my  prayers  that  brought  you  your  good  luck,  for  we 
could  never  find  you.  How  proud  your  mother  must  be  of 
you.  Oh!"  She  caught  a  look  in  Larrick's  eyes,  a  gulp  in 
his  throat.  "Forgive  me,  you  poor  child!  Was  it  long 


^ 

Larrick  nodded  gloomily.  She  wrung  his  arm  with  her 
soft  hand  and  sighed  : 

"Then  I  shall  adopt  you  for  mine,  and  this  place  shall 
be  your  home,  if  you'll  accept  it.  Will  you?" 

Larrick  could  only  grin  and  swallow  and  feel  deliciously 
uncomfortable  —  all  of  which  pleased  her  more  than  the 
readiest  rhetoric  of  a  courtier  could  have  done. 

She  turned  to  her  own  lad  : 

"Your  father  will  want  to  see  his  new  son.  You'll  find 
him  in  the  barn  looking  over  his  latest  purchases  at  the 


OLE  LI  A  195 

auction.  Go  get  him  away  from  there.  Tell  him  we  have 
an  early  dinner.  It's  the  servants'  night  at  the  movies  and 
if  we  delay  them  they'll  leave  in  a  body.  Sixteen  of  them 
abandoned  Mr.  Warrenden  last  Thursday  because  he 
wouldn't  send  them  two  nights  a  week,  and  he  had  a  big 
house  party  on.  Run  along,  and" — she  patted  Larrick — 
"you  know  all  about  cattle;  show  my  husband  how  little 
he  knows." 

Frewin  led  Larrick  through  a  maze  of  gardens  to  the  dis- 
tant stable  yard.  It  was  an  estate  in  itself,  a  walled  city. 

They  found  the  senior  Frewin  gloating  over  the  enormous 
bulk  of  a  placid  Ayreshire  bull.  A  farmer  held  him  by 
a  long  pole  and  a  nose  ring,  but  he  was  in  a  mood  of  peace. 
A  vast  structure  of  creamy  skin,  with  patches  of  russet,  his 
eyes  amiable,  and  no  sign  of  life  except  the  grinding  of  his 
cud. 

Frewin  introduced  Larrick  to  his  father  and  the  two 
men  wrung  hands.  After  a  confession  of  gratitude  as  sweet 
as  his  wife's,  but  not  so  flattering  to  the  young  cub  of  a  son, 
Mr.  Frewin  asked  Larrick  his  opinion  of  the  monarch  of 
the  pasture. 

"I  snapped  him  up  at  a  bargain.  I  got  that  beauty  for 
only  fourteen  thousand  dollars.  Is  he  worth  it?  I'll  say 
he's  worth  twice  as  much." 

Larrick  tottered  at  the  price.  He  had  nothing  at  all  to 
say.  Frewin  justified  himself  as  a  business  man  and  a  man 
by  adding: 

"My  wife  says  I  am  a  greenhorn,  but  I  say  a  thing  is 
worth  as  much  as  you  can  sell  it  for  or  as  much  as  you 
want  to  sell  it  for.  I  had  an  offer  of  twenty  thousand  for 
that  pale-faced  gentleman  before  we  got  him  out  of  the 
ring,  so  I  call  him  a  buy." 

Larrick  reckoned  he  was,  and  young  Frewin  told  old 
Frewin  that  if  he  did  not  come  to  dinner  soon  there  would 
be  no  servants. 

That  fetched  him. 

Life  on  the  Frewin  farm  was  heaven  to  Larrick.  He  had 
a  father,  a  mother,  and  a  brother,  and  all  of  them  removed 


i96  BEAUTY 

from  the  clamor  and  the  difficulties  of  city  existence.  He 
needed  the  repose  and  the  friendliness,  for  his  heart  was  raw 
and  weary.  The  servants  felt  something  of  the  nearness  to 
nature.  They  were  simple,  friendly,  cordial.  The  gar- 
deners, the  farmers,  the  cattlemen,  the  chauffeurs,  were  all 
at  ease.  Larrick  was  one  of  a  big,  handsome  family. 

But  he  was  unwittingly  resting  himself  up  for  a  new  ordeal 
— the  ordeal  of  suddenly  meeting  Clelia  Blakeney. 

She  came  to  him  in  a  beauty  that  had  something  of  the 
supernatural  about  it.  Her  entrance  into  his  life  was  as 
unearthly  as  her  exit  from  it.  But  between  the  two  extremes 
there  was  earthliness  enough  and  beyond  enough. 

She  upset  his  every  ideal,  knotted  his  motives  into  an 
inextricable  tangle,  filled  him  not  only  with  the  very  worship 
of  beauty  in  its  purest  essence,  but  with  distrust  of  himself 
and  of  everyone  else;  with  enmity  toward  himself  and  all 
the  world.  She  kept  him  in  a  frenzy  of  anxieties  and  of 
contradictory  remorses. 

For  the  love  of  beauty  is  the  root  of  all  ugliness. 


CHAPTER  III 

T  TNEXPECTED  guests  turned  up  at  the  Frewin  home 
LJ  that  evening  in  such  excitement  that  the  dinner  was 
late,  after  all,  and  the  servants  missed  the  moving  pictures 
— but  without  regret. 

The  house  was  a  great  U-shaped  mansion  and  Larrick's 
room  looked  down  into  the  front  court.  As  he  dressed 
hastily  by  a  window  he  saw  a  big  limousine  roll  up  to  the 
stately  entrance. 

The  chauffeur's  clothes  were  burned  in  spots  and  his  face 
was  sooty.  Out  of  the  limousine  piled  a  remarkable  group 
of  men,  women,  and  children,  all  of  them  smudged  of  feature 
and  scorched  of  raiment. 

Larrick's  curiosity  gave  him  speed  and  he  thrust  into  his 
clothes  with  the  velocity  of  a  rural  volunteer  fireman.  He 
walked  down  the  hall  and  descended  the  steps  in  a  pretense 
of  leisureliness,  belied  only  by  the  fact  that  he  had  forgotten 
to  knot  his  black  tie. 

He  found  the  great  entrance  chamber  clamorous  with  the 
Frewins  and  their  strange  guests,  all  of  them  talking  at 
once.  Mrs.  Frewin  had  flung  on  a  light  wrap  and  her 
husband  and  Norry  were  in  bathrobes.  The  visitors  looked 
like  beggars  and  they  called  themselves  by  that  name,  but 
they  were  relatives  of  the  Frewins  and  of  equal  opulence. 

Larrick  held  aloof,  unnoticed,  and  soon  learned  that  their 
house  had  been  burning  all  afternoon  and  that  the  fire 
was  an  almost  complete  success.  Practically  nothing  was 
left  but  a  mound  of  singed  furniture  on  the  lawn  and  a 
few  gouged  paintings,  scorched  rugs,  and  ripped  tapestries 
snatched  out  by  the  excited  neighbors  and  the  belated 
firemen.  Each  of  the  family  had  fought  hard  for  some  one 
thing  personally  precious. 


i98  BEAUTY 

Mrs.  Squair  had  brought  away  her  jewels  at  the  cost  of  a 
blistered  wrist.  She  half  sobbed  and  half  laughed: 

"It  was  hard  to  remember  the  combination  of  that 
damned  wall  safe,  with  the  flames  darting  at  me  like  snakes." 

Miss  Clarice  Squair  had  rescued  the  love  letters  of  her 
fiance'  who  was  flying  in  the  Kosciuszko  Squadron  in  Poland, 
giving  the  Bolshevik!  such  literal  blowings  up  as  Mr.  Squair 
gave  them  verbally  whenever  he  referred  to  them — and 
"Bolshevik"  was  his  new  epithet  for  everything  he  loathed. 

The  eight-year-old  girl  had  broken  free  of  her  governess 
and  darted  up  the  stairs  for  her  pet  Maltese  poodle,  which 
was  somewhat  smoked,  but  still  exceedingly  indignant  and 
piercingly  shrill  in  giving  his  version  of  the  fire  in  sharp  yips. 

John  Squair,  the  father,  alone  had  failed  to  save  his  most 
prized  possession,  and  he  was  quite  unmanned  by  the  loss. 
He  leaned  heavily  on  the  elder  and  the  younger  Frewin  as 
he  explained: 

"I  had  just  put  in  twenty-five  thousand  dollars'  worth 
of  liquor — beautiful  stuff,  too,  oh,  beautiful!  I  had  built 
in  a  burglar-proof  safe,  with  a  trick  signal  system  and 
everything.  The  whole  damned  roof  fell  in  on  it  and 
cracked  it  open  and  the  fire  did  the  rest.  I  had  a  lot  of 
extra  stuff  behind  secret  panels,  in  various  places,  and — 
oh,  Lord,  that's  gone!  And  only  last  week  I  was  laughing 
at  Jim  Haven;  you  remember  a  gang  of  burglars  made  an 
excavation  through  his  cellar  walls,  backed  up  motor  trucks, 
and  left  it  drier  than  William  Jennings  Bryan's  soul.  And 
now  mine's  gone  and  nobody  will  get  the  benefit  of  it." 

Frewin  was  solemn,  but  philosophical. 

"Well,  you  must  be  brave." 

"But,  as  the  seasick  Scotchman  said,  'But,  mon,  that 
was  whusky!'  There  was  only  so  much  good  liquor  left 
in  the  world  and  I  had  counted  on  growing  old  along  with 
that  stock." 

The  mourners  were  helped  up  the  stairs  to  the  guest  rooms, 
of  which  there  were  enough  to  house  a  small  tribe. 

As  they  crowded  past,  Mrs.  Frewin  presented  Larrick 
to  them.  They  were  all  beyond  vanity  and  made  a  joke  of 
it,  though  their  laughter  was  a  trifle  hysterical. 


CLELIA  199 

They  were  provided  with  much-needed  baths  and  with 
such  under  and  over  clothes  as  the  house  afforded.  By 
the  time  they  came  down  again  they  were  calm  and  clean 
and  unrecognizable  in  their  manifestly  borrowed  clothing. 

The  dinner  was  an  hour  late,  but  the  kitchen  crew  did  not 
mutiny,  for  they  had  had  the  chauffeur  to  listen  to,  and 
stories  of  storms  at  sea  are  no  more  absorbing  to  sailors  safe 
ashore  than  tales  of  country-house  fires  to  people  whose 
country  houses  have  not  burned  down — yet. 

At  the  table  there  were  the  usual  inevitable  anecdotes  of 
the  stupid  mistakes  that  provide  the  same  humors  for  all 
fires.  But  behind  the  nervous  gayety  there  was  a  grave 
suffering,  for  the  blaze  had  rendered  them  paupers  in  all 
the  collections  they  had  been  making  in  all  their  lives. 
A  few  furtive  tears  escaped  Mrs.  Squair  and  sudden  gulps 
as  she  remembered  irreplaceable  souvenirs  of  her  young  love, 
her  children,  dead  or  grown  up,  portraits  of  her  mother 
and  father,  and  unique  trinkets  of  her  past. 

Mr.  Squair  had  similar  griefs  of  his  own,  but  he  could 
not  forget  that  his  cellar  was  full  of  melted  glass  from  which 
the  volatile  spirits  had  escaped.  The  elder  Frewin  proved 
himself  a  Samaritan,  indeed,  for  he  proffered  Squair  enough 
from  his  own  savings  against  a  dry  old  age  to  keep  him  going 
until  he  could  smuggle  in  from  somewhere  a  new  supply. 

The  question  of  liquor  was  occupying  a  vast  amount  of 
the  nation's  attention,  now  that  prohibition  had  settled 
down  as  an  established  state  of  affairs  and  the  prospect  of 
relief  had  been  ended  by  the  terror  both  political  parties 
had  shown  of  even  considering  an  amendment  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Amendment.  The  number  of  arrests  for  drunken- 
ness, after  falling  off  remarkably  upon  the  first  success  of 
prohibition,  had  tripled  lately  in  places,  and  the  violence 
of  the  inebriation  was  said  to  be  greater.  But  nobody 
seriously  prophesied  a  removal  of  the  ban.  People  were 
settling  down  to  it  and  smuggling  was  replacing  baseball 
as  the  national  sport  (especially  when  a  stupefied  public 
learned  that  several  of  the  revered  baseball  heroes  had  been 
quietly  selling  out  the  biggest  games  to  the  gamblers). 
Clubs  were  getting  into  trouble  with  the  liquor  spies.  The 


200  BEAUTY 

homes  of  a  few  millionaires  had  been  raided.  Every  day 
trucks,  loaded  with  tens  of  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of 
booze,  were  captured  in  the  city  streets  and  the  country 
roads  and  confiscated.  Homes  were  going  up  in  flames  as 
private  distilleries  exploded.  There  was  a  vast  exchange 
of  recipes  and  much  pathetic  effort  to  concoct  a  palatable 
home  brew,  and  "hootch"  was  a  new  word  on  everybody's 
lips.  Things  were  going  back  to  the  good  old  Puritan  days 
when  every  family  brewed  its  own  liquor,  though  the  little 
children  were  not  now  encouraged  to  take  it  with  their 
meals  as  then. 

Norry  Frewin  was  startled  when  young  Tom  Squair  told 
him  that  their  friend  Evert  Schuyler  had  been  arrested  in  a 
hotel  dining  room  and  taken  to  jail  with  his  woman  com- 
panion because  a  woman  of  the  police  force  had  caught  the 
glint  of  his  silver  flask  as  he  "spiked"  two  glasses  of  mineral 
water. 

This  put  a  new  terror  into  daily  existence  and  Norry  took 
out  his  own  hip  flagon  and  petted  it  anxiously.  Everybody 
knew  that  flasks  were  illegal,  but  nobody  expected  such  rich 
people  to  be  arrested.  Jails  were  for  the  poor  and  dirty. 

Clarice  Squair,  however,  had  a  lighter  note  to  contribute 
to  the  gloom: 

"There's  good  in  everything,"  she  said.  "It  looks  as  if 
prohibition  would  cut  down  divorce  more  than  all  the  sermons 
ever  preached.  Jane  Pearsall  told  me  that  she  and  her 
husband  had  agreed  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives.  It  was 
about  their  divorce,  and  they  had  everything  beautifully 
arranged,  when  up  came  the  question  of  the  division  of  the 
hootch.  That  beast  of  a  husband  of  hers  didn't  want  to 
give  her  any.  He  said  that  nice  women  did  not  drink. 
She  said  that  that  was  a  lie  in  the  first  place,  but,  anyway, 
a  grass  widow  had  to  have  something  to  save  her  callers 
from  dying  of  thirst.  She  claimed  a  dowry  right  to  one 
third  of  the  cellar  and  swears  she  won't  be  turned  out  into 
the  night  without  a  drop  of  nose  paint  for  a  dry  day,  and  he 
can  buy  it  better  than  she  can.  Then  they  fought  over 
how  much  cash  her  share  of  the  liquor  should  represent  as 
liquidated  alimony — or  alcoholimony.  Jane  is  a  bit  close 


CLELIA 


201 


herself,  you  know,  and  she  only  offered  him  the  price  he  paid 
for  it.  Of  course  it  costs  from  three  to  ten  times  as  much 
now,  and  he  went  up  in  the  air  over  that. 

"Then  there's  the  question  of  moving.  Whichever  one 
keeps  the  house,  the  other  has  to  move  part  of  the  liquor, 
and  that  is  not  only  illegal,  but,  worse,  dreadfully  dangerous. 
He  is  afraid  to  stir  and  so  is  she.  So  I  shouldn't  be  sur- 
prised if  they  finally  settled  down  and  resigned  themselves 
to  a  ripe  old  age  together,  and  that  means  one  less  scandal 
for  the  newspapers.  So  cheer  up,  dad." 

But  her  father  groaned : 

"Prohibition  may  have  dealt  a  blow  to  divorce,  but  it  has 
added  a  new  terror  to  death.  My  old  friend  Sturtevant 
figured  up  his  expectancy  of  life  and  his  capacity  for  liquor 
and  laid  up  a  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  the  stuff. 
Then  he  jumped  out  of  the  way  of  one  automobile  into  the 
way  of  another.  Well,  his  widow  has  just  married  a  much 
younger  man  that  old  Sturtevant  was  always  jealous  of, 
and  the  young  hootch  hound  is  now  drowning  himself  in 
the  old  man's  wine." 

Then  they  all  drank  with  pious  ceremony,  though  none  of 
them  wasted  a  drop  on  libations. 

Mrs.  Frewin  had  told  the  Squairs  all  about  Lamck's 
unparalleled  heroism  and  he  was  panic-stricken  when 
Catherine  toasted  him  with  swimming  eyes  across  the 
beaded  brim  of  her  champagne  shell,  "Here's  to  you,  my 
cowboy  hero." 

That  "my"  sounded  dangerous. 

Catherine  was  a  spinster  and  a  large  one.  It  seemed 
strange,  somehow,  to  Larrick  to  find  that  there  could  be 
very  rich  old  maids.  Catherine  was  apparently  not  one 
from  choice,  but  from  character. 

She  was  always  wooing  the  men  and  putting  their  hearts 
to  flight.  She  went  for  Larrick  at  once.  She  deluged  him 
with  rhapsodies  on  the  glory  of  the  Western  life.  She  de- 
nounced the  evils  of  wealth  and  luxury  with  the  fervor 
usually  restricted  to  those  who  have  never  enjoyed  them. 

She  had  been  on  ranches,  had  broken  a  wild  broncho  or 
two,  and  had  taken  part  in  a  rodeo.  After  dinner  she 


202  BEAUTY 

hunted  up  a  late  copy  of  the  Spur  and  showed  Larrick  a 
photograph  of  herself  setting  a  horse  to  a  high  gate  in  a 
jumping  contest.  She  was  dressed  in  a  shirt  and  breeches 
and  she  was  waving  a  big  felt  hat  in  a  wild  abandonment  to 
the  joys  of  aviation  on  a  hippoplane. 

She  sighed  to  relate  that  all  her  snapshots  of  herself  on 
a  Montana  ranch  roughing  it  with  the  cowboys  had  been 
consumed  in  the  fire.  She  would  sooner  have  lost  her  eye 
teeth,  she  said,  and  she  declared  that  she  was  going  to 
marry  the  first  rancher  that  she  could  ride  out  of  the  herd. 

The  timid  Larrick  would  probably  have  felt  it  incumbent 
to  offer  himself  at  once  with  fatal  chivalry  if  he  had  not 
been  thinking  of  something  else.  It  was  not  till  he  got  to 
his  room  long  after  that  he  realized  with  abrupt  cold  sweat 
that  he  had  absent-mindedly  allowed  a  lady  to  offer  him  her 
hand  and  had  not  even  answered  with  an  evasion.  / 

He  had  been  thinking  with  surprise  of  the  adaptability  of 
the  rich.  He  had  always  supposed  that  wealth  rendered 
them  soft  and  lazy  and  helpless.  Yet  all  the  rich  he  had  met 
were  athletic,  full  of  zest,  and  ready  for  any  hardship  or  any 
change  of  condition. 

The  poor  and  the  roughly  bred  were  awkward  and  lost 
when  confronted  with  a  change  of  environment.  Among 
luxurious  surroundings  they  were  scared  and  crude  and 
inelastic.  But  the  wealthy  took  to  harsh  conditions  with 
joy  when  they  chose  it,  and  with  philosophy  when  it  was 
forced  on  them. 

Larrick's  first  well-served  meals  even  in  a  dining  car 
had  filled  him  with  terror  of  the  cutlery  and  the  menu  and 
the  other  passengers.  But  a  Roosevelt  could  eat  from  gold 
plate  with  a  king  and  have  a  good  time  and  then  go  out 
and  have  a  better  time  wrastling  the  grub  at  a  wagon  end 
on  a  round-up. 

The  women,  too,  could  suit  their  mood  to  the  occasion, 
and  make  a  joke  of  a  fire,  a  financial  wreck,  or  a  cataclysm. 
In  a  social  wreck,  too,  they  could  usually  carry  themselves 
with  a  high  head,  and  where  a  poor  girl  caught  in  a  scandal 
would  slink  away  to  disgrace  in  the  dark,  a  rich  girl  would 
face  the  world  with  unflinching  pride. 


CLELIA  203 

He  thought  of  Nancy  Fleet  and  her  fearlessness  of  nearly 
everything.  She  was  not  even  afraid  of  beauty.  He  began 
to  be  lonely  for  her,  and  to  think  of  making  a  dash  into 
Newport.  The  thought  of  riding  into  that  famous  citadel 
of  high  life  filled  him  with  a  craven  fear  that  confirmed  his 
poor  opinion  of  the  poor  and  humble. 

He  was  really  lonely,  not  so  much  for  Nancy  as  for  a 
woman  who  would  keep  his  emotions  busy.  And  she  was 
hurrying  toward  him  unbeknownst  to  either  of  them. 

Clelia  would  exercise  his  emotions — all  of  them,  including 
emotions  that  he  had  not  known  he  had  in  him. 
14 


CHAPTER  IV 

FOR  a  few  days  Larrick  reveled  in  the  more  innocent,  the 
pastoral  phases  of  wealthy  existence.  He  was  awakened 
by  the  hoarse  voices  of  peacocks  for  whom  Nature  thought 
she  had  done  enough  at  the  farther  end. 

He  threw  on  a  bathing  suit  and  a  bathrobe  and  ran  through 
a  cloister  to  a  little  temple  opening  on  a  swimming  pool. 
This  was  as  unlike  as  possible  to  any  water  he  had  ever 
known.  He  had  crept  down  the  muddy  banks  and  swum 
in  the  brown  soup  of  the  Rio  Grande,  and  he  had  considered 
almost  any  patch  of  moisture  beautiful. 

But  here  was  a  pellucid  fluid  in  which  every  goldfish  hung 
like  a  breathing  ruby  and  the  concrete  floor  was  clear  at  the 
greatest  depth.  He  plunged  in  and  swam  about  with  the 
hilarity  of  a  merman. 

And  sometimes  there  were  mermaids.  The  Squair  girls 
were  apt  to  take  their  morning  tubs  there  al  fresco  and  with 
little  more  clothing  than  in  their  own  bathrooms.  And, 
as  Nony  said  to  Larrick  with  early-morning  crudity,  "Those 
girls  are  Squair  in  name  only." 

Their  costumes  were  so  minimized  that  when  they  first 
scampered  from  the  house  and  paused  on  the  brink  like 
Diana's  nymphs  seeing  Actason,  Larrick  turned  his  face 
away  till  they  should  be  in  the  water.  The  nymphs  did  not 
seem  to  mind;  it  was  Actaeon  that  turned  pale,  though  no 
horns  formed  on  his  head.  The  water  was  like  a  magnifying 
glass,  and  when  they  were  in  they  were  not  sheltered  from 
his  helpless  eyes. 

Catherine  made  herself  quite  at  home  with  him,  shot 
water  into  his  eyes  with  ungrateful  comedy,  and  insisted 
on  diving  from  his  shoulders.  She  was  almost  more  than  he 
could  bear.  He  was  confused  to  imbecility  as  she  scrambled 
ruthlessly  about  him  and  pressed  his  blushing  head  into  the 


CLELIA 


205 


water  with  her  sole.  Her  hilarity  distressed  him;  it  was 
somehow  the  more  unamusing  in  effect  for  being  so  earnestly 
intended  for  amusement. 

Catherine  was  one  of  those  who  are  doomed  to  have  their 
witticisms  serve  as  wet  blankets.  An  evil  fairy  curses  their 
mirth  and  glee  with  a  funereal  influence,  but  their  good  fairy 
makes  them  incapable  of  seeing  how  saddening  they  are. 

Larrick's  generous  soul  was  doubly  harrowed  by  the  pa- 
ralysis of  his  risibles  and  of  his  chivalry.  He  simply  could 
not  accept  Catherine's  awkward  challenges  to  flirtation. 

It  would  have  been  easy  enough  to  philander  with  Clarice, 
who  was  appallingly  tempting  in  the  dazzling  candor  of  her 
glowing  flesh.  When  she  climbed  the  cornice  of  the  bath- 
house and  split  the  blue  water  with  a  javelin  slash,  then 
rolled  slowly  and  as  if  sleepily  to  the  surface  in  the  smother 
of  the  froth  she  had  made,  she  might  have  been  Aphrodite 
the  foam-born.  Her  bathing  suit  was  hardly  more  than  a 
colored  varnish  about  her  torso,  and  even  Larrick  felt  the 
need  of  sculpture  to  record  the  superb  contours  of  her  one 
cheek,  one  shoulder,  one  breast,  one  hip  and  thigh  as  they 
detached  themselves  in  high  relief  from  the  plane  of  the 
water. 

But  Clarice  would  not  play  at  love.  She  was  true  to  her 
far-off  aviator  in  thoughts,  and  she  made  one  envy  him  the 
possession  of  the  living  statue  she  was — "and  didn't  care 
who  knew  it,"  as  Larrick  mumbled  to  Norry. 

The  old  standards  of  sex  relation  were  undergoing  a  fearful 
test  of  their  tensile  strength.  Men  could  not  forget  the 
ancient  heritage  of  the  ideals  of  decency  in  a  season  or 
two.  Women  were  coming  very  close  to  the  old  Japanese 
custom  of  bathing  nude  with  the  men.  Men  had  bathed, 
naked,  together  from  time  immemorial,  and  if  the  custom 
established  itself  it  might  be  that  before  long  women  would 
join  them  in  the  same  state.  As  it  was,  almost  nothing  at 
all  was  left  to  the  imagination. 

The  nicest  women  seemed  to  carry  off  the  new  clothesless- 
ness  calmly,  though  no  man  could  know  their  real  feelings. 
But  it  was  a  strain  on  the  men. 

The  father  of  the  Squairs  came  to  the  pool  once  or  twice 


2o6  BEAUTY 

in  his  globular  bathing  suit.  He  suffered  as  much  from 
the  sight  of  his  shameless  children  as  a  fat  hen  having  hys- 
terics over  a  brood  of  ducklings.  He  raged  at  the  breakfast 
table  afterward,  but  his  daughters  only  laughed.  And  one 
morning  Clarice  goaded  him  into  special  fury.  She  said: 

"I  suppose  you  prefer  the  English  custom  of  separate 
bathing,  from  bathing  wagons?" 

"I  do,  indeed!"  old  Squair  sputtered.  "People  are  con- 
servative over  there  and  nice  women  wear  stockings  and 
real  clothes;  they  go  into  their  wagons  and  come  out  of 
them  into  the  water  and  keep  the  men  at  a  distance." 

Having  lured  him  to  her  trap,  Clarice  snapped  it: 

"It's  easy  to  see  that  you  haven't  been  over  for  some  time, 
daddy,  my  love.  I've  just  had  a  love  letter  from  Towny 
Bayliss.  He  doesn't  know  I'm  engaged,  and  I  think  he's 
trying  to  make  me  jealous.  This  is  what  he  says  of  your 
grand  old  British  conservatism.  He's  visiting  Lady  What- 
you-may-call-'em  at  her  castle.  See,  there's  the  name  of  the 
castle  embossed  on  the  letter  paper.  I'll  skip  the  sugary 
beginning,  and  come  down  to  the  study  of  social  customs. 

"The  system  of  swimming  caused  some  wonderment  on  my  part, 
I  can  tell  you.  Lady  Anne  sent  Miss  Stuart  and  me  off  to  the 
beach  the  first  afternoon  for  a  swim.  We  each  carried  a  suit  along. 
On  arriving  at  the  aforementioned  beach,  Miss  Stuart  casually 
informed  me  that  we  would  each  select  a  rock  behind  which  to 
undress — 'not  the  same  rock,'  she  naively  added. 

"After  looking  carefully  in  all  directions,  I  discovered  that  the 
largest  rock  was  not  much  bigger  than  a  teacup.  'Ah/  thought  I, 
'she  will  have  her  little  joke,'  but  whilst  I  was  reflecting  on  the 
situation  in  general  and  mine  own  in  particular  the  young  lady 
drew  somewhat  apart  and  began  in  all  maidenly  modesty  to  remove 
her  garments. 

"Not  knowing  what  was  expected  of  me,  I  only  stood  and 
admired  and  admired  and  admired.  As  I  said,  this  young  person 
took  off  her  clothes  with  an  £lan  and  an  entire  lack  of  self -conscious- 
ness which  in  my  long  and  varied  career  I  have  scarcely  seen 
equaled. 

"After  she  donned  a  costume  and  ran  down  to  the  sand  I  re- 
covered from  my  astonishment — and  did  likewise.  Oh,  these 
English!  !  !  they  do  the  most  unexpected  things! 


CLELIA  207 

"Every  afternoon  since,  we  have  gone  bathing  together  and 
exactly  the  same  ceremony  takes  place  in  the  same  inexplicable 
manner.  I  shall  be  here  perhaps  a  month.  I  manage  to  do  a 
great  deal  of  reading  every  day,  besides  the  golf,  tennis,  and  swim- 
ming. I  miss  you  terribly  .  .  . 

"And  so  on." 

Clarice  looked  up  at  her  father.  He  was  snow-white  with 
horror. 

The  elder  Frewin  was  amused.  He  had  no  daughters  to 
raise  and  be  afraid  for,  and  of.  He  roared  with  laughter 
at  Squair's  mute  terror  of  such  a  world.  Then  he  referred 
to  his  paper: 

"It's  got  to  be  one  extreme  or  another,  I  guess.  Here's 
what  the  senatorial  wit  of  Georgia,  Mr.  Glenn,  proposes.  It 
seems  that  State-Senator  Wilkinson  of  Georgia  put  forward 
a  bill  prohibiting  males  and  females  from  bathing  together 
at  any  public  or  private  pool,  pond,  lake,  river,  or  ocean, 
and  fixing  the  limits  of  the  bathing  suits.  State-Senator 
Glenn  proposes  a  substitute  that  ought  to  satisfy  you,  old 
man.  Listen." 

He  read  from  his  paper: 

"The  Glenn  substitute  attempts  to  make  effective  the  segrega- 
tion of  the  sexes  contemplated  in  the  Wilkinson  bill  by  requiring 
that  men  shall  bathe  in  the  Pacific  Ocean,  women  in  the  Atlantic, 
and  children  in  the  Mississippi  River  and  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

"Senator  Wilkinson  would  merely  require  all  bathers,  both  men 
and  women,  to  be  covered  from  armpit  to  knee.  Senator  Glenn  is 
shocked  at  the  amount  of  epidermis  this  would  leave  uncovered 
and  his  substitute  requires  a  fringe  of  lace  to  be  attached  to 
both  top  and  bottom  of  all  bathing  suits.  Furthermore,  beach 
loungers  or  sand  lizards  must  wear  aprons  covering  them  to 
the  toes. 

"But  gather  round  and  harken  to  the  regulations  of  tub 
bathing.  Briefly  they  are: 

"i.  Tub  baths  at  any  time  except  on  Saturday  nights  are  de- 
clared unlawful,  except  for  newly  born  infants. 

"a.  Baths  must  be  taken  in  a  cave,  cavern,  tunnel,  or  deeply 
darkened  room;  bathers  must  always  be  partially  clothed,  and 


2o8  BEAUTY 

any  person  who  exposes  himself  or  herself  entirely  in  the  nude  to 
his  or  her  own  gaze  shall  be  considered  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor. 

"3.  No  person  may  take  more  than  one  bath  on  a  given  Saturday 
night  except  by  purchase  of  a  proxy  .  .  . 

"Senator  Glenn  announces  officially  in  his  substitute  that 
he  will  have  fifty-one  proxies  for  sale  the  first  year  that  the 
act  shall  be  in  effect." 

This  seemed  to  be  the  ultimate  reductio  ad  absurdum  of 
the  efforts  to  enforce  modesty,  but  Father  Squair  could  not 
see  any  humor  in  it.  He  was  not  quite  up  to  the  standard 
of  the  early  Christian  fathers  who  accounted  all  bathing  as 
pagan  lust  of  the  flesh  or  of  the  Christian  mothers  who  made 
their  children  wear  clothes  in  their  tubs,  but  he  was  far  from 
the  1920  liberality. 

Indeed,  the  world-old  struggle  to  embattle  virtue  in 
clothes  and  other  fortresses  is  tragic  enough  for  everybody 
coneerned;  for  the  parents  who  long  to  keep  clean  hearts 
in  young  bosoms  and  for  the  young  who  are  proud  of  their 
bosoms.  If  experience  had  ever  indicated  a  successful 
program  the  rest  would  be  easy,  but  morals  have  never  been 
fouler  than  where  clothes  have  been  most  numerous  and  they 
have  never  been  cleaner  than  where  clothes  were  absent. 

Yet  it  cannot  be  easy  for  parents  to  realize  this.  Squair 
pere  was  still  glum  when  the  family  left  the  table.  Norry 
Frewin  tried  to  help  him  over  the  rough  place.  He  went 
to  the  long  table  and  picked  up  a  book,  thumbing  its  pages 
till  he  found  his  place. 

"They  arrested  a  magazine  editor  last  year  for  reproducing 
a  painting  of  a  nude  figure,  but  the  missionary  books  are 
packed  with  them — and  the  travel  books,  too.  I  was  reading 
Stewart  Edward  White's  The  Rediscovered  Country  yesterday 
and  he  tells  about  coming  to  the  Kavirondo  country  and 
meeting  a  young  black  flapper.  He  says  somewhere — here 
it  is — 

"She  had  a  string  of  beads  about  her  neck,  armlets,  a  leather 
string  about  her  waist,  and  three  mosquitoes.  However,  that  did 
not  seem  to  bother  her.  One  would  naturally  imagine  that  a 
totally  naked  people  would  be  far  down  in  the  human  scale  and 


CLELIA  200 

would  exhibit  the  lowest  type  of  savagery.  This  is  not  the  case. . . . 
Those  who  know  these  people  well  tell  me  that  they  are  the  most 
chaste  of  all  the  tribes." 

Still  the  father  of  the  Squairs  was  neither  convinced  nor 
consoled.  The  very  discussion  of  the  subject  was  unendur- 
able, and  he  left  the  room  with  a  gesture  of  despair. 

Larrick  rather  sympathized  with  him.  But  his  days  were 
not  much  occupied  with  discussing  the  inveterate  topic  of 
young  women's  morals.  He  saw  little  of  the  Squair  girls 
except  in  the  morning  (when  he  saw  almost  all)  and  at  meals. 

He  wandered  about  the  cattle  yards,  learning  of  cows  and 
bulls  as  individuals  of  aristocracy  and  fame.  He  had  thought 
of  cattle  in  the  herds,  valuable  according  to  weight  and 
number,  and  individual  only  when  he  met  a  particularly 
fractious  or  elusive  member  of  the  drove.  Now  he  found 
that  some  of  them  had  their  portraits  published  about  the 
world  and  were  auctioned  at  prices  Circassian  beauties  had 
never  brought. 

He  studied  the  horses  and  learned  gradually  to  ride  a 
trotter  with  pleasure  and  good  form.  One  of  the  grooms 
began  to  teach  him  to  ride  a  hunter  and  to  jump  him  by 
steadily  increasing  the  height  of  the  bar  and  shrieking  to 
him  at  the  take-off,  "Keep  your  own  'ead,  sir,  and  leave  the 
mare  'ers."  But  once  over,  he  must  throw  himself  back 
and  be  ready  to  pull  up  in  case  of  a  stumble. 

The  trouble  was  that  when  he  had  learned  to  sail  with  one 
horse,  the  next  had  a  method  of  his  own.  One  rushed  the 
panel,  one  topped  it,  one  took  it  in  the  stride  like  a  hurdler. 

But  in  time  the  man  from  the  barbed-wire  country  was 
able  to  negotiate  the  stone  walls  and  flat  fences  of  West- 
chester  with  a  fair  precision.  He  fell  often,  but  his  bones 
did  not  break. 

Then  there  were  the  dogs,  of  all  sorts,  the  famous  Frewin 
Airedales,  in  their  palatial  kennels,  the  big  and  little,  shaggy, 
wiry,  and  silken-coated,  infinitely  various  members  of  the 
canine  family,  each  with  his  or  her  own  sotd  and  pride  and 
code  of  honor  and  anger. 

Leaving  the  stables  and  the  kennels,  Larrick  would 
stumble  about  the  plowed  fields,  marveling  at  the  richness 


BEAUTY 

of  the  loam  in  comparison  with  the  sterile  sand,  though  it 
was  poor  against  the  waxy  ooze  of  the  more  favored  Texas 
soil. 

He  would  lose  himself  in  a  forest  of  old,  old  trees,  aspiring 
and  aloof  from  the  dense  younger  generations.  He  lis- 
tened to  strange  birds,  alert  and  ecstatic  on  the  thronged 
branches.  He  followed  butterflies  and  considered  strange 
beetles.  He  stood  for  long  whiles  barkening  the  mystic 
chortle  of  brooks,  delving  and  deliberating  in  their  unhurried 
loiter  along  their  winding  trails. 

He  drifted  through  the  formal  and  the  informal  gardens, 
dazed  by  the  symphonic  scents,  the  color  festivals,  the 
multitudinous  fascinations  of  petal  and  leaf  and  stem. 

The  ambition  of  this  magnate  Frewin  seemed  to  be  to 
regain  within  his  walls  an  Eden  of  safety  and  delight  where 
he  and  his  Eve  and  every  bird  and  beast  and  flower  and 
tree  might  be  at  ease,  well  nurtured  and  admired,  cajoled, 
but  not  coerced. 

The  human  beings  hereabouts  seemed  to  be  as  happy  as 
anyone  had  a  right  to  expect  to  be.  He  often  happened  upon 
old  Frewin  and  his  wife  standing  with  their  arms  about 
each  other's  broad  waist  to  revel  over  a  plant  or  a  tree 
and  debate  its  welfare  as  if  it  were  a  child.  He  had  not  been 
warned  that  rich  couples  could  be  lovers  as  well  as  poor. 

He  caught  the  old  butler  fretting  because  an  old  poodle 
had  lost  her  appetite.  He  saw  the  maids  selecting  roses  for 
the  table  and  the  rooms  and  reveling  in  the  sunshine.  The 
gardeners  and  the  stablemen  and  the  plowmen  and  the 
cattle  tenders  were  all  serenely  busy,  proud  of  their  high 
achievements. 

He  wondered  why  everybody  was  not  perfectly  content, 
and  sighed  as  he  wondered.  And  heard  as  an  echo  Norry 
Frewin  breathing  deeply  of  impatience.  Their  very  youth 
that  was  their  chief  riches  was  aching  to  be  spent. 

Sara  Teasdale's  lines  expressed  their  surprise  at  their  own 
restlessness  and  its^cause: 

Oh,  beauty,  are  you  not  enough? 
Why  must  I  go  crying  after  love? 


CHAPTER  V 

ONE  evening  when  dinner  was  again  brought  forward 
from  eight  to  six-thirty  Mrs.  Frewin  said: 

"To-night,  you  remember,  we  go  over  to  the  Shakespeare 
fe"te  at  the  LowriesV 

Norry  Frewin  protested,  but  his  mother  insisted: 

"It's  for  charity,  and  everybody  within  ten  miles  has 
worked  hard;  it's  little  enough  to  ask  you  to  make  an 
audience.  Besides,  you'll  enjoy  it.  It's  the  same  beautiful 
playlet  of  Jim  Metcalfe's  that  was  given  two  years  ago,  but 
with  a  different  cast  this  time.  You  had  the  same  excuse 
then  and  stayed  away,  but  you've  got  to  go  to-night,  and 
that's  final!" 

Norry  groaned  to  Larrick: 

"We're  in  for  it!  These  amateur  affairs  are  ghastly,  but 
She  Who  Must  Be  Obeyed  has  spoken." 

And  so  at  eight  a  limousine-load  set  out  from  the  house. 
The  passengers  were  garrulous,  and  Catherine,  who  was 
squeezed  in  close  to  Larrick,  was  apparently  willing  to  be 
flirted  with  in  the  flying  dark,  but  he  was  afraid  she  would 
take  any  caress  as  a  betrothal  promise,  and  pretended  to  be 
obtuse. 

Besides,  the  poetry  of  the  retreating  scene  bound  him  in  a 
spell.  The  car  seemed  to  stand  fast,  rocking  like  an  anchored 
ship,  while  the  panorama  ran  backward  in  review — woods 
with  their  primitive  air  upon  them  still  as  when  the  Indians 
soft-footedly  threaded  them,  miles  of  stone  walls,  the 
horizontal  monuments  of  how  many  backaches  for  pioneers 
who  heaped  up  all  these  rocks  and  found  their  fields  as 
flinty  as  ever;  hills  and  smooth  pastures,  abandoned  spooky 
farmhouses  with  their  frames  rotted  to  lace ;  sudden  palaces 
with  formal  approaches  and  stately  gateways;  then  wilder- 
ness again.  And  all  the  foliage  and  every  trunk  of  every 


2i2  BEAUTY 

tree  had  in  the  glare  the  thinness  and  flatness  of  stage 
scenery. 

At  length  they  shot  up  a  long  slope  to  the  ivy-smothered 
Lowrie  castle.  Scores  of  cars  preceded  and  followed  them, 
and  village  policeman  stood  out  in  the  glare  of  lights,  ordering 
the  traffic.  The  Frewins  drew  up  to  the  radiant  entrance 
and  climbed  out.  At  the  door  they  were  met  by  money 
changers  and  ticket  takers. 

It  seemed  strange  to  pay  admission  to  such  a  residence, 
but  in  the  name  of  charity  anybody  with  five  dollars  was  a 
welcome  guest.  The  rich  and  the  poor  had  endured  for 
years  such  unheard-of  drains  upon  their  generosity  that 
worn-out  Charity  slept  unless  she  were  promised  amusement. 
If  vanity  and  jealousy  had  some  little  share  in  the  appeals, 
it  was  all  for  a  worthy  end,  and  they  might  have  been  more 
busy  at  less  helpful  activities. 

As  Larrick  entered  he  gaped  at  the  grandeur  of  the  Lowrie 
great  doors  and  vestibule  and  the  vistas  they  deployed.  It 
was  ostentatious,  ornate,  and  horribly  expensive,  but  this 
did  not  displease  Larrick's  taste.  He  was  far  from  being  so 
sated  with  splendor  as  to  have  come  round  to  a  yearning 
only  for  simplicity,  subtlety,  restraint,  severity,  and  other 
more  or  less  dyspeptic  ideals.  If  foreign  masters  of  flattery 
had  managed  to  make  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lowrie's  portraits  look 
like  the  ancestors  they  ought  to  have  had  and  had  not,  all 
the  better.  The  more  humbly  they  had  made  their  money, 
the  more  loftily  they  should  spend  it. 

The  moment  Larrick  emerged  into  the  gardens  at  the  back, 
however,  he  felt  that  boastfulness  had  ended  and  submission 
to  beauty  was  complete.  Poetry  was  everywhere.  Nature 
had  been  invited  to  make  herself  at  home,  tempted  with 
luxuries  and  urged  to  put  on  her  best  bib  and  tucker,  indeed, 
but  she  was  all  the  more  mistress  of  all  she  surveyed. 

The  gardens  at  the  side  were,  perhaps,  a  little  too  imperial 
for  a  private  home;  they  were  sunken  in  descending  marble 
terraces,  and  their  columnar  majesty  would  have  sufficed 
for  an  assembly  of  temples.  But  they  were  beautiful,  and 
there  was  ravishment  in  the  broken  lights  and  mellow 
shadows  upon  the  shafts,  the  intricate  capitals,  and  the  fine, 


CLELIA  213 

keen  lines  of  the  architraves.  There  was  a  music,  too,  of 
cascades  tumbling  from  basin  to  basin,  and  a  wizardry  of 
electric  lamps  flowering  in  unexpected  places  like  some  new 
and  angelic  rose  that  breathed  radiance  instead  of  fragrance. 

The  lawn  at  the  back  of  the  house  was  the  triumph  of  all, 
for  it  was  just  a  plain  of  grass  outspread  to  a  brink  where  the 
hill  went  swiftly  down  into  the  valley.  Dimly  seen  across 
the  valley  were  other  rounded  hills,  and  long  ridges  suavely 
modeled  in  the  best  traditions  of  the  Westchester  school  of 
landscape. 

The  lawn  was  broken  only  by  a  small  marble  pool  in  the 
center  of  it.  On  its  farther  flank  a  high  forest  rose  in  a 
precipice  of  shadow  against  the  dull  sky. 

The  players  had  hoped  that  the  moon  would  assist  at  this 
celebration  of  that  Shakespeare  who  had  always  spoken  so 
well  of  her. 

But  clouds  cut  her  off  and  gave  just  enough  threat  of  rain 
to  add  a  dramatic  suspense  both  to  the  fate  of  the  ceremonial 
and  to  the  fate  of  the  costume  of  every  woman  who  dreaded 
a  gout  of  water  in  her  finery. 

The  audience  was  seated  on  chairs  and  rented  camp- 
stools  ranged  along  the  rear  balconies  and  the  walks.  A 
misted  light  sifting  through  the  lace  at  the  curtained  windows 
gave  enough  illumination  to  enable  people  to  find  their 
places  and  recognize  their  neighbors. 

The  crowd  was  more  numerous  than  the  chairs;  and  late 
comers,  or  young  people  whose  duty  it  was  to  surrender  their 
places  to  the  older,  spread  overcoats  and  mantles  on  the  grass 
and  reclined  or  sprawled. 

Larrick  stared  at  a  few  of  these  in  wonder.  They  were  so 
young,  yet  so  forward.  The  twilight  encouraged  them  to 
informalities  and  some  of  the  girls  sneaked  puffs  at  their 
escort's  cigarettes  and  some  of  them  smoked  quite  frankly. 
Their  language  and  their  advanced  flirtatiousness  startled 
Larrick — and  others  of  the  spectators. 

Young  people  have  always  behaved  and  misbehaved  and 
made  their  own  experiments  in  fire  with  about  the  same 
precocity,  but  many  people  were  watching  them  with  a  new 
terror,  since  certain  stories  and  a  very  exciting  novel,  by  a 


2i4  BEAUTY 

very  brilliant,  very  young  man,  Master  F.  Scott  Fitzgerald, 
had  just  stirred  the  country,  vividly  producing  the  ardent 
thoughts,  deeds,  and  language  of  boys  and  girls  at  an  earlier 
age  than  had  hitherto  been  allowed  to  burn  so  hot  in  American 
fiction. 

Nothing  is  more  startling  (perhaps  because  few  things  are 
rarer)  than  to  find  a  work  of  fiction  making  use  of  facts 
that  are  familiar  to  everybody.  Things  that  people  regard  in 
the  flesh  without  especial  horror  hurt  their  reading  eyes 
amazingly. 

That  very  wise  editor  and  philosopher  E.  W.  Howe  has 
said  something  along  this  line: 

A  man  writes,  "A  doctor  dare  not  tell  the  truth  about  families." 
But  we  know  the  truth  about  families;  also  about  doctors.  The 
assumption  that  a  great  many  things  are  hidden  from  us  isn't  true. 
Many  disreputable  things  go  on,  but  we  know  about  them.  And 
there  are  many  good  deeds  to  offset  the  bad  ones,  and  we  know 
about  them.  We  know,  also,  that  the  average  is  very  fair. 

The  things  that  authors  are  forbidden  to  write  and 
arrested  for  writing  are  familiar  experiences  and  universal 
facts  about  one  or  two  emotions  that  practically  everybody 
goes  through  in  one  way  or  another.  That  is  why  Havelock 
Ellis's  most  important  books  could  not  be  published  in  his 
native  England  at  all  and  were  published  here  under  stringent 
restrictions. 

So  now  it  seemed  appalling  to  find  it  recorded  in  the 
precocious  pages  of  Mr.  Fitzgerald  that  boys  of  prep.- 
school  age  and  girls  in  their  wee  sma'  teens  had  discovered 
what  kisses  taste  like,  had  learned  to  hug  one  another  in 
odd  nooks,  and  were  already  having  love  affairs  with  all 
the  attendant  pomp  and  circumstance  of  jealousy,  perfidy, 
desperation,  indiscretion,  and  worse.  None  were  so  shocked 
as  their  mothers  and  grandmothers  who  were  having  trouble 
with  their  own  young.  Many  of  the  parents  had  already 
been  married  and  had  had  these  very  children  by  the  time 
they  reached  the  age  they  wanted  to  consider  innocent  in 
1921. 

People  forgot  that  Juliet,  who  certainly  knew  a  thing  or 


CLELIA  215 

two  about  amorous  passion,  was  only  thirteen  when  her 
mother  told  her  it  was  time  to  marry,  and  told  her,  "Younger 
than  thou  here  in  Verona,  ladies  of  esteem,  are  already 
mothers." 

It  is  still  within  the  law  in  five  of  our  Southern  states  for  a 
girl  to  wed  with  her  parents'  consent  at  the  age  of  twelve; 
in  one  state  a  girl  of  twelve  may  marry  without  parental 
consent.  And  in  two  Northern  and  two  Southern  states  a 
a  boy  may  marry  if  he  secures  parental  approval  at  fourteen ; 
in  twelve  states  there  is  no  age  limit  specified  at  all. 

In  1920  a  sixteen-year-old  wife  applied  for  divorce  after 
having  been  married  for  three  years.  Havelock  Ellis  tells 
of  a  girl  who  was  a  mother  at  the  age  of  eight.  Yet  in  New 
York  a  man  was  tried  for  kidnapping  because  he  married 
a  sixteen-year-old  girl. 

We  are  frightened  when  the  young  begin  the  preliminaries 
of  the  mating  season  and  reveal  the  passions  we  would  delay 
until  their  twenties.  Most  of  us  lay  the  blame  for  these 
morning  serenades  on  the  moving  pictures  or  the  modern 
dances  or  the  modern  fiction.  Always  that  word  "modern" 
has  been  used  as  the  synonym  for  "improper."  As  if  there 
had  ever  been  a  time  when  the  old  were  denied  the  bliss  of 
horror  at  "modern"  wickednesses  or  when  children  failed  to 
be  disrespectful. 

Back  in  the  prim  days  of  1675  in  the  Puritan  citadel  of  the 
Plymouth  colony  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  pro- 
claimed that  the  bloody  war  with  the  Indian  King  Philip 
was  God's  judgment  on  the  sins  of  those  very  modern  times, 
and  specified  as  causes  of  the  war,  "excess  in  apparel,  naked 
breasts  and  arms,  profane  cursing  and  swearing,  tippling, 
want  of  respect  for  parents,  and  the  riding  from  town  to  town 
of  unmarried  men  and  women  under  pretense  of  attending 
lectures — a  sinful  custom  tending  to  lewdness." 

Change  "lectures"  to  "dances"  or  "movies,"  add 
cigarettes  (women  smoked  only  pipes  then),  and  interpolate 
automobiles,  and  the  words  would  serve  for  any  one  of 
ten  thousand  recent  sermons  and  satires  on  the  unprecedented 
wickedness  of  1921. 

And  when  we  marvel  at  the  freedoms  and  familiarities  of 


216  BEAUTY 

the  courtship  customs  of  this  horrifying  generation  let  us 
not  forget  the  grand  old  American  device  of  "bundling." 
The  more  modest  homes  were  bitter  cold  in  those  steamless 
days  and  the  old  folk  went  to  bed  early  to  sleep.  The 
youngsters,  to  whom  courtship  was  a  vitally  important  in- 
dustry, could  not  sit  up  and  freeze,  so  the  nice  young  girls 
and  their  nice  young  callers  crept  into  bed  also.  Of  course 
they  were  fully  clothed  and  in  their  right  minds,  seeing 
that  the  right  mind  for  youth  is  toward  love.  But  there 
and  thus  the  courtship  proceeded  according  to  the  individual 
and  combined  inclination.  Compared  to  this,  as  Adelaide 
says,  the  fox-trot  is  rather  formal. 

Nature  seems  determined  to  keep  many  emotions  alive, 
and  two  of  them  that  will  not  die  are  the  thrill  of  shocking 
and  the  thrill  of  being  shocked.  They  are  as  old  and  as 
perennially  new  as  love  itself.  The  same  spirit  that  be- 
wailed "not  only  incontinencie  betweene  persons  unmaried, 
but  some  maried  persons  allso"  in  Puritanical  1642  is  still 
as  fresh  and  as  freshly  astonished,  lo  these  two  hundred  and 
seventy-nine  years  since.  The  devil  has  many  aliases,  but 
he  is  the  same  old  boy. 

It  was  inevitable  then  that  Larrick  should  be  smitten  with 
wonder  at  the  prematurity  of  the  lads  and  lasses  who  flirted 
surreptitiously  before  him,  and  that  he  discredited  it  some- 
what to  the  laxity  of  wealth,  as  if  Cupid  were  any  re- 
specter of  classes  and  as  if  the  poor  and  the  remote  were 
denied  the  sweet,  sharp  practices  of  love,  wickedness,  and 
temptation. 

Larrick  had  time  enough  for  much  unprofitable  debate 
until  the  performance  began.  Then  the  murk  of  the  dull 
sky  was  withdrawn  before  a  sudden  moonlight  that  flooded 
the  lawn. 

On  the  roof,  automobile  lamps  filtered  through  a  blue 
screen  supplied  what  the  weather  refused.  The  artificial 
moon  lurched  a  trifle  at  first,  then  settled  down  for  a  steady 
glimmer  of  dreamy  azure.  A  searchlight  began  to  run  across 
the  forest,  with  a  suggestion  of  actual  search.  Music  from 
somewhere  made  the  air  murmurous,  like  an  audible  moon- 
light. 


CLELIA  217 

And  now  the  searchlight  found  what  it  hunted.  Abruptly 
on  the  stone  wall,  as  if  by  a  magic,  stood  a  slim  youth  in  an 
old-time  costume,  leaped  from  the  past,  in  slashed  and  tas- 
seled  doublet,  trunks,  and  hose,  and  a  cap  adorned  with  one 
high  feather  and  long  silken  ears.  It  was  Will  Shakespeare's 
Puck. 

Larrick  heard  Norry  Frewin  gasp: 

"Good  Lord!" 

Then  Larrick  winced  as  Norry  gripped  his  arm  and 
whispered: 

"That's  Clelia!  That's  the  Miss  Blakeney  I've  told  you 
about.  If  I'd  known  she  was  to  be  in  this  I'd  never  have 
come." 

Larrick  recalled  the  brief  moment  of  Clelia's  flight  past 
him  in  the  dark  corridor  of  Norry's  apartment  house.  Now 
she  was  before  him  in  a  mystic  illumination.  The  boyish 
costume  made  her  more  girlish  than  ever;  but  she  was  very 
young  still,  her  frame  hardly  more  than  the  scant  armature  on 
which  the  full  sculpture  of  her  womanhood  was  to  be  built. 

For  a  long  moment  she  stood  statuesque  as  one  of  the 
epheboi  of  Praxiteles,  lithe  and  motionless  as  his  Lizard- 
Slayer.  Then  the  statue  spoke,  still  motionless,  except  for 
her  lips. 

Clelia's  voice  was  high  and  young  and  a  trifle  piping 
in  its  treble  as  she  recited  the  evocation  which  was  to  bring 
out  of  the  dark  the  well-remembered  people  of  Shakespeare. 

There  was  a  pleasant  anachronism  in  the  poem  that 
Shakespeare  would  have  practiced  himself — he  who  so  loved 
his  own  town  and  time  that  he  could  not  even  write  of 
Julius  Cassar's  Rome  without  fetching  in  quips  that  only 
London  could  understand. 

"  While  now  the  foxy  lawyer  dreams  of  fees, 

The  Wall  Street  man  of  low  finance, 
And  revelers  eat  and  drink  at  ease, 

While  others  to  queer  rag-time  dance; 
Now  half-waked  mothers  still  their  crying  babes, 

And  fathers  snore  in  selfish  sleep, 
While  countless  Ikes  and  Sols  and  Abes 

Are  riding  home  in  taxis  cheap; 


2i8  BEAUTY 

While  coppers  steal  a  doorway  nap, 

And  milk  carts  just  begin  to  clatter, 
When  yowling  cats  have  ceased  to  scrap, 

And  all  the  town  is  free  from  chatter, 
We  fairy  folk,  and  others  in  our  train,. 

Are  gathered  here  in  precincts  still, 
All  children  of  that  mighty  brain 

That  lived  and  died  with  Stratford's  Will." 

After  the  first  few  lines  Puck  dropped  from  the  wall 
to  the  ground  and  came  forward  chanting  and  dancing, 
weaving  an  intricate  and  willful  path  across  the  lawn,  bend- 
ing and  whirling  her  arms  and  hands  and  her  body  and  her 
pretty  legs  in  a  rhapsody  of  grace. 

Up  to  the  pool's  rim  she  came,  and  the  pool  repeated  her 
inverted  image  like  a  doll  cut  out  of  a  folded  paper  and 
brought  to  life. 

Larrick  was  bewitched  by  her  and  always  remembered 
her  as  having  something  unhuman  about  her  in  her  most 
human  moods,  as  if  she  could  not  have  been  born  of  woman 
and  compelled  to  grow.  As  Minerva  was  struck  full  armed 
and  wise  from  one  of  Jupiter's  headaches,  so  Clelia  seemed 
to  have  stepped  into  the  moonlight  from  the  painless  travail 
of  some  poet's  heartache. 

She  was  not  finished.  She  was  not  very  wise.  She  was 
not  full  armed  or  full  bosomed,  but  she  was  ferociously 
alive. 

(And  as  she  came  into  the  world  in  her  slim  crescent  moon- 
hood,  so  she  went  out  of  it,  never  knowing  marriage  or 
motherhood  or  age,  missing  all  the  more  terrible  raptures, 
but  missing  also  the  grisly  woes.  She  sipped  only  the 
bouquet  and  the  bubbles  at  the  rim  of  the  chalice,  and  never 
tasted  the  body  of  the  wine  of  life,  nor  gagged  at  the  dregs. 
There  was  pity  and  there  was  repenthe,  too,  in  the  thought.) 

The  memory  of  his  first  sight  of  Clelia  struck  through  Lar- 
rick's  sleep  like  a  lightning  thrust. 

He  woke  with  a  startle  of  fright  from  the  dreamful  sleep 
or  the  lethargy  of  reverie  that  had  absorbed  him.  He  leaped 
from  his  chair  and  leaned  against  the  window,  panting  hard 
as  he  stared  at  the  big  block  of  ice  outside  that  imprisoned  the 


SURELY    THE    DEAD    GIRL    HAD    COME    TO    LIFE!      SURELY    SHE    WAS 
STRUGGLING   AGAINST   HER   CRYSTAL   COFFIN 


CLELIA  219 

form  of  Clelia.  It  fitted  her  as  closely  as  diaphanous  silk; 
yet  it  was  as  firm  as  steel. 

Surely  the  dead  girl  had  come  to  life!  Surely  she  was 
struggling  against  her  crystal  coffin,  writhing  to  throw  off  the 
smotliering  cerement  as  if  it  were  a  suffocating  nightmare! 

Larrick  hung  on  the  window  frame,  breathing  in  great  gulps 
like  an  overdriven  fugitive.  He  could  not  move  to  open  the 
door  and  run  out  to  help  her,  though  he  felt  the  same  frenzy 
to  seize  an  ax  and  beat  away  the  ice  that  Michelangelo  used  to 
feel  when  he  saw  in  a  shapeless  bulk  of  marble  some  heroic 
figure  and  assaulted  the  stone  to  release  and  reveal  the  vision 
it  encumbered. 

The  very  thought  of  Clelia  alive  again  after  the  agony  of 
her  loss  was  a  frightful  bliss,  a  staggering  ecstasy.  Such  a 
miracle  of  resurrection  made  him  faint.  An  angel  must  be 
at  work  out  there  and  he  dreaded  to  interfere,  lest  it  take  flight. 

For  a  few  vague  long  moments  he  clung  to  the  casement, 
watching  for  the  completion  of  the  marvel  and  reveling  in  the 
thought  of  the  girl's  restoration  to  the  world  she  had  blessed. 

Then  the  cruelty  of  realism  that  annuls  so  much  of  fancy's 
poetry  brought  him  down  to  fact  again.  He  gathered  his 
courage  together  and,  opening  the  door  as  quietly  as  he  could, 
went  out  on  ilie  porch.  The  cold  of  the  night  flung  round  him 
a  mantle  of  chill.  Shuddering,  he  went  to  the  pillar  of  ice  and 
stared  into  it  and  saw  that  Clelia  did  not  move.  That  madden- 
ing, breathless,  pulseless  fixity  still  prevailed. 

His  eyes  went  up  in  a  throe  of  deluded  hope  and  beheld 
ragged  clouds,  driven  by  a  high  wind  in  the  upper  regions, 
racing  across  the  moon.  The  moon  seemed  to  be  running 
swiftly  and  whitely  through  them  in  a  panic.  The  air  close 
to  the  earth  was  still  frozen  and  freezing.  But  the  cloud  rush 
aloft  caused  a  quivering  shuttle  from  light  to  dark  and  half 
dark  that  played  upon  the  ice  and  gave  it  the  illusion  of  motion. 

The  miracle  was  denied.  Death  was  still  absolute  and  relent- 
less. Larrick  bowed  his  head  and,  dropping  down  to  his  knees, 
wept,  sobbing  into  the  crook  of  his  arm  and  yielding  to  the 
weakness  he  had  resisted  as  a  cowardice. 

He  had  seen  Nancy  Fleet  weep  over  Clelia,  and  had  watched 
Mrs.  Roantree  in  the  despair  of  age,  and  the  maid,  Berthe,  in 

JlO 


220  BEAUTY 

the  passionate  resentment  of  youth,  but  he  had  not  wept,  though 
he  had  envied  them  their  clamor. 

He  had  withstood  the  rack  of  sorrow,  but  the  gush  of  joy,  ike 
false  smile  of  hope,  had  tricked  him  and  broken  him.  He  cried 
as  he  had  never  cried  in  his  earliest  boyhood.  He  took  pains 
to  muffle  his  woe  in  his  arms  and  no  one  heard  him.  If  he 
could  have  been  glad  of  anything  he  would  have  been  glad  of  that. 

The  aftermath  of  his  tears  was  an  exhaustion  of  spiritual 
and  bodily  strength.  He  could  hardly  lift  himself  to  his  feet. 
He  wanted  to  be  dead,  but  he  felt  that  he  owed  it  to  Clelia  to 
avenge  her;  and  he  heaved  himself  up  and  stumbled  to  the  door. 

He  paused  for  a  backward  glance  at  Clelia.  The  flutter 
of  light  so  renewed  the  hallucination  of  life  that,  knowing  it  a 
cheat,  he  could  hardly  disbelieve. 

The  beauty  of  the  might-be  overcame  him  again  and  he 
whimpered  as  he  closed  the  door  like  a  coffin  lid  and  tottered 
to  the  fireplace.  When  he  knelt  to  stir  up  the  dulling  embers 
he  was  hardly  strong  enough  to  raise  a  log  and  lay  it  on  the 
coals. 

Then  he  crouched  in  the  attitude  that  prairie  wanderers  find 
natural,  his  feet  atiptoe  and  his  haunches  on  his  heels.  And 
he  stared  into  the  wakening  flames,  seeing  the  past  pass  by 
again  in  crimson  pictures.  After  a  time  he  dragged  his  weary 
feet  back  to  his  chair  by  the  window  and  went  on  with  his  reverie. 


CHAPTER  VI 

IT  was  a  strange  way  for  a  girl  to  appear  first  to  a  man — 
in  such  garb,  with  such  a  lyric,  in  so  unreal  a  light.  Lar- 
rick  was  moonstruck  with  her.  Fate  took  an  unfair  ad- 
vantage of  him.  Realist  as  he  was,  he  had  a  feeling  that 
could  only  be  expressed  with  an  Irishism,  "It  was  the 
fairies  was  in  it." 

If  Norry  Frewin  had  not  said  several  times  that  Clelia 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  him,  if  he  had  not  just  now 
said  that  he  would  not  have  come  if  he  had  known  that 
Clelia  was  to  be  there,  Larrick  might  have  looked  upon  Clelia 
as  another  man's  claim,  to  be  coveted  inevitably,  but  not  to 
be  expected  or  sought  after. 

As  it  was,  she  came  to  him  in  utter  detachment  from 
such  commonplace  conditions  as  being  engaged  to  some  fel- 
low or  having  a  lover's  spat  with  him.  She  came  to  him 
for  him,  made  for  him  out  of  mist  and  shadow  and  grace  and 
delight. 

He  worshiped  and  accepted  her  as  a  Greek  shepherd 
might  have  accepted  a  dryad  that  leaned  out  of  a  tree  to  him, 
or  a  nymph  that  smiled  up  from  a  brook,  and  wooed  him 
with  strange  speech  and  beckoning  arms. 

He  forgot  Frewin 's  pre-emption  of  her  and  Nancy  Fleet's 
pre-emption  of  him.  He  sat  starting  and  clutching  at  his 
chair  to  keep  from  dashing  forward  to  seize  her  and  carry 
her  away  as  his  very  own. 

When  her  prologue  was  finished  she  ran  to  the  woods  and 
called  forth  other  beings  from  another  world,  and  across  the 
wall  swarmed  a  covey  of  a  dozen  or  more  young  girls,  dressed 
as  young  Grecian  maidens  in  more  or  less  light  chiffon  that 
left  their  arms  and  legs  quite  bare. 

And  this  little  platoon,  ranging  from  six  to  sixteen  in  years, 
came  bounding,  leaping,  and  romping  forward  in  a  dance  of 


222  BEAUTY 

lifted  arms  and  flying  knees  and  bare  feet  and  flaunting 
draperies. 

They  charged  to  the  rhomboid  of  the  pool  and  were 
echoed  upside  down  as  they  flung  themselves  into  the  air 
with  an  awkwardness  prettier  than  a  better  schooled  grace. 
Soon  they  capered  away  to  the  wall  again,  and  then  the 
people  of  Shakespeare  came  up  over  the  brow  of  the  hill 
from  nowhere,  each  with  a  couplet  of  verse,  describing  his 
soul  or  hers,  and  leaving  the  spectators  to  guess  the  name. 
It  was  a  tribute  indeed  to  a  small-town  writer  dead  these 
three  centuries  to  have  so  many  of  his  creatures  so  promptly 
recognized  by  a  people  who  had  carried  the  worship  of  him 
overseas. 

The  Melancholy  Dane  stalked  in  first;  then  Romeo  and 
Juliet  in  fatal  embrace;  the  tomboy  Beatrice;  the  green- 
eyed  Moor;  the  Shrew;  Mark  Antony;  the  hunchbacked 
Gloster;  the  fool,  the  motley  fool;  Rosalind  in  long  hose; 
the  Jew  of  Venice;  the  cross-gartered  Puritan,  and  others, 
including  a  band  of  crowned  ghosts  and  a  mob  of  lesser 
personages. 

They  aligned  themselves  along  the  wall  above  the  sunken 
gardens. 

Then  Puck  came  forward  again,  and  the  avaricious  Larrick 
discovered  her  with  eye  and  ear  as  she  gave  warning  of  the 
dawn: 

"Now  sounds  the  early  note 

Of  the  bird  who  wakes  the  other  birds; 
Its  echo  sounds  from  trees  remote, 

While  growing  blue  th'  horizon  girds  .  .  . 
And  generations  yet  unborn  shall  see 

Us  playing  still  to  nations  yet  unmade  .  .  . 
So  glide  we  now  on  our  eternal  way.  ..." 

There  was  a  final  roundelay  in  chorus,  with  Puck  dancing 
among  the  throng  as  it  melted  away  below  the  hill.  Then 
Puck  vaulted  to  the  wall  and,  with  a  farewell  gesture,  leaped 
back  into  the  gloom. 

Larrick  felt  nothing  ominous  in  this  brief  passage  across 
his  life  of  this  bright  transient  in  a  too  beautiful  world. 
He  was  too  glad  to  have  seen  her.  He  was  splitting  open 


CLELIA  223 

with  questions  to  ask  about  her  and  demands  to  meet  her, 
but  Norry  was  grumbling,  the  audience  was  breaking  up 
into  groups  chattering  about  the  excellence  of  the  perform- 
ance. He  dared  not  confess  his  infatuation. 

Nearly  everybody  there  had  a  son,  daughter,  brother,  or 
sister  or  cousin  among  the  players,  and  congratulations  were 
swapped  wholesale. 

Norry  Frewin  told  Larrick  that  he  was  going  home  before 
he  ran  into  Clelia.  He  told  his  mother  that  he  had  a  head- 
ache and  she  excused  him  reluctantly,  but  she  insisted  on 
keeping  Larrick  with  her.  She  mumbled  to  him : 

"I  want  you  to  meet  everybody.  They're  such  nice 
people,  some  of  them,  and  you  might  find  the  very  girl  you 
want.  If  you  do  and  I  like  her,  I'll  get  her  for  you." 

Larrick  wanted  to  cry:  "I've  found  her.  Go  get  her ! "  but 
he  was  afraid  even  to  ask  a  question  about  Clelia.  Mrs. 
Frewin  presented  him  to  numberless  girls,  and  many  of  the 
characters  in  the  play  came  into  the  house  in  their  costumes. 
But  whatever  Larrick  might  have  thought  of  any  of  them 
under  other  auspices,  now  he  saw  them  all  darkly  as  through 
the  glass  of  Clelia's  enchantment. 

Mrs.  Frewin  confused  him  by  telling  one  or  two  of  the 
women  what  a  hero  he  had  been,  but  Larrick  begged  her  to 
keep  silent.  This  story  was  becoming  as  tiresome  to  him 
as  a  serious  composer's  one  popular  song.  He  sickened  of  it 
as  Schumann  did  of  "The  Two  Grenadiers"  and  as  Grant 
did  of  "Lo,  the  Conquering  Hero  Comes!" 

Eventually  he  heard  just  back  of  him  and  a  little  beneath 
his  head  a  voice  that  sent  a  thrill  along  his  spine.  It  said 
only,  "  Hello,  Mrs.  Frewin !"  but  it  sounded  like  some  greeting 
that  only  Shakespeare  could  have  worded  from  plain  hu- 
manity into  exquisite  poetry. 

Mrs.  Frewin  turned  to  say: 

"Why,  hello,  Clelia!  You  were  wonderful!  Really  quite 
wonderful!  Wasn't  she,  Mr.  Larrick?  Oh,  haven't  you 
met?  You  must!  Clelia — Miss  Blakeney — or  Mr.  Puck 
Blakeney — this  is  Mr.  Larrick." 

Larrick  put  out  his  hand,  but  she  did  not  see  it.  She  gave 
a  careless  nod  and  said: 


224  BEAUTY 

"How  d'do?" 

She  was  not  quite  his  Clelia  now.  She  had  doffed  her 
Puck  costume  and  put  on  the  costume  of  the  Juliets  of  1921 
— something  that  left  her  throat  and  shoulders  and  arms 
fully  exposed  in  a  sketchy  and  timid  modeling  that  promised 
ever  so  much;  the  rest  was  silk  or  taffeta  or  some  exquisite 
and  crinkly  material  that  clung  about  her  affectionately  and 
admiringly,  almost  boastful  of  the  grace  that  it  advertised 
with  all  the  artful  devices  of  concealment. 

Clelia  had  lost  something  of  the  poetry  of  the  far  away, 
but  she  had  gained  the  potency  of  real  flesh  and  blood  and 
immediate  proximity. 

Mrs.  Frewin  said: 

"  Be  nice  to  Mr.  Larrick.  He  saved  Norry's  life  in  Texas. 
Get  him  to  tell  you  all  about  it.  I  must  go  tell  dear  Mr. 
Metcalfe  how  perfectly  splendid  his  little  play  was." 

She  was  gone  and  Larrick  felt  alone,  alone,  all,  all  alone, 
alone  on  a  wide,  wide  sea,  with  a  siren  who  hung  across  the 
edge  of  his  boat.  The  crowds  that  knocked  them  about 
were  mere  waves  blundering  past. 

Larrick  was  tongue-tied  with  a  rush  of  Shakespearian 
emotions  and  no  Shakespearian  vocabulary.  Clelia  spoke 
first,  and  with  as  Puckish  impudence. 

"I'm  not  especially  obliged  to  you  for  saving  Norry's 
worthless  life,  but  how  did  you  come  to  do  it?" 

"  Oh,  he  was  down  in  Texas  and  he  got  in  a  little  scrape, 
and — " 

"He  would — always  did — always  will.  What  was  this 
particular  lady's  name — Juanita,  or  something?" 

"No,  this  wasn't  a  lady.  It  wasn't  a  gentleman,  either — 
just  a  drunken,  shootin'  fool,  and  that  made  three  of  us, 
and  the  rest  was  easy." 

"  Oh,  that  makes  it  all  perfectly  clear.     I  can  just  see  it ! " 

Larrick  loved  to  be  ridiculed  by  her,  somehow,  and, 
though  he  writhed,  it  was  a  tickled  torment.  His  unspeak- 
able comfort  in  her  presence  was  ended  abruptly  by  some 
tall,  handsome,  hatefully  handsome  fellow  who  pushed  by 
and  said: 

"Come  along,  Clele;  this  is  our  dance." 


CLELIA  225 

"But  I  thought—" 

"No,  you  didn't.  You  were  simply  glorious  to-night. 
I  was  crazier  about  you  than  ever." 

He  was  dragging  her  through  the  crowd  and  his  words 
trailed  after  them  as  they  vanished.  Larrick  followed  to  the 
door  of  the  ballroom,  where  dancing  was  already  brisk.  A 
handsome  girl  offered  him  the  privilege  of  the  floor  for  a 
dollar,  and  when  he  gave  her  a  wadded  five  she  thanked  him 
and  fastened  in  his  buttonhole  a  circular  card  appropriately 
resembling  a  ticket  of  admission  to  a  paddock. 

He  watched  the  dancing  current  with  harpooning  eyes, 
stabbing  after  Clelia  as  she  bobbed  in  and  out  of  sight  in 
the  swirl.  He  wanted  to  leap  in  and  tear  her  from  the  arms 
of  the  masterful  stranger  who  kidnapped  her.  But  though 
he  saw  many  other  men  cutting  in,  he  did  not  feel  enough 
at  home  for  any  such  adventure.  Other  men  took  Clelia 
away  from  her  first  abductor,  and  from  one  another,  and  she 
went  like  a  slave  from  this  bosom  to  that  without  protest. 
Finally  her  first  captor , regained  her  and  kept  her  till  the 
jazz  was  over,  the  encores  were  exhausted,  and  the  dancers 
dispersed. 

Larrick  wondered  how  to  get  her  back  and  wished  that  he 
had  brought  North  with  him  a  little  of  that  careless  deviltry 
with  the  women  and  dare-deviltry  with  the  men  that  had 
carried  him  so  high  at  Texas  dances.  But  he  could  not  be 
brave  here. 

Suddenly  he  felt  a  hand  on  his  arm  and,  as  if  his  unspoken 
prayers  had  been  overheard  by  a  special  guardian  angel, 
a  kind  of  valet  angel,  he  found  Clelia  looking  up  at  him 
and  saying: 

"You're  such  a  life  saver  you  must  have  a  cigarette?" 

"  I  cert'ny  have,"  he  said,  diving  his  hands  into  his  pockets. 

"Come  on  out  in  the  dark,  then,  and  tell  me  the  story  of 
your  young  life." 

He  felt  that  such  impudence  should  be  met  with  kindred 
audacities,  but  he  could  not  even  think  of  an  audacity  to 
reject.  He  hobbled  at  her  heels  while  she  found  chairs, 
placed  hers  to  suit  her,  shoved  his  chair  around,  sat  down, 
and  put  her  feet  up  on  the  stone  coping  with  a  flare  of  long, 


226  BEAUTY 

slim  stockings  that  Larrick  dared  not  quite  observe,  but 
could  not  keep  his  mind  from. 

She  put  out  her  little  hand  and  said,  "Gimme!" 

He  proffered  his  cigarette  case  and  was  glad  that  he  had 
spent  so  much  money  on  it  that  she  paused  to  say : 

"Umm!     Pretty  snappy,  that!" 

She  took  a  cigarette  and  put  out  her  hand  again  for  the 
match  he  held  aflame.  As  she  puffed,  the  blaze  waxed  and 
faded,  throwing  now  into  relief  and  now  into  shadow  the 
rounded  lowered  eyelids,  the  tiny  Ionic  curves  of  her  nostrils, 
the  kiss-inviting  fruitiness  of  her  pursed  lips,  the  sworl  of 
her  chin,  the  pitifully  pretty  throat,  her  dimpled  shoulders, 
and  the  little  ivory  ravine  that  ran  between  the  just  imagined 
remembrancers  that  she  was  meant  for  motherhood  some  day. 
The  light  of  the  match  slid  in  swift  strokes  along  her  fingers 
and  arms  and  flashed  on  the  edged  wrinkles  of  her  gown. 

When  she  passed  the  match  to  Larrick  his  eyes  fell  as  hers 
opened,  lest  she  see  the  fierceness  in  his  gaze. 

"  Now  tell  me  all  about  you  and  Texas,"  Clelia  commanded. 
"You're  an  awful  bad  man,  I  hope — with  lots  of  notches 
on  your  gun — every  notch  a  life — and  can  you  draw  and 
shoot  as  quick  as  one  of  Zane  Grey's  darling  desperadoes? 
Got  your  gun  on  you  now?" 

When  Larrick  snickered  and  shook  his  head  she  said, 
"Aren't  you  afraid  you'll  take  cold  without  it,  get  sciatica  or 
something?" 

He  felt  like  a  fool,  but  a  blissful  one.  After  a  little  further 
chatter  a  last  gasp  of  conscience  or  precaution  led  him  to  say : 

"Norry  Frewin — " 

She  cut  him  short:  "I'm  off  Norry  for  keeps.  I  know 
you're  a  friend  of  his  and  it's  mighty  white  of  you  to  stick 
to  him,  but —  Oh,  he's  a  nice  boy,  but  he  never  will  grow 
up,  and  his  taste  is  entirely  too — too — do  I  mean  catholic? 
It  sounds  pretty  religious  for  Norry.  But,  anyway,  I  like 
him,  but  I'm  not  going  to  play  with  him  any  more.  I  hate 
crowds — except  at  dances.  Do  you  dance?" 

"Well,  I  can't,  but  I  do." 

"  I  suppose  out  West  there  you  make  the  tenderfeet  dance 
by  shooting  at  their  feet.  Do  you  ? ' ' 


CLELIA  227 

" I've  seen  where  it  said  so  in  books,  so  it  must  be  so;  but 
I  never  met  up  with  it." 

"You're  awfully  stupid  for  a  cowboy.  Come  on  in  and 
dance." 

She  flicked  the  cigarette  across  the  coping,  and  Larrick 
followed  suit.  She  led  him  to  the  ballroom,  and  then,  turning 
suddenly,  placed  her  arms  about  him  and  accepted  his 
embrace. 

This  sudden  possession  of  her  stunned  him.  He  lost  him- 
self for  a  moment  of  wonder  at  this  most  familiar  and 
inexplicable  of  phenomena  that  a  man  may  be  introduced 
to  a  strange  girl  at  a  dance  and  immediately  clench  her  to 
his  breast  and  whirl  her  as  he  will. 

Dancing  with  Clelia  was  as  unlike  dancing  with  Nancy 
as  could  be.  Nancy  was  full  blown,  burning  to  the  touch, 
passionate,  experienced,  somber,  voluptuous,  round,  and 
responsive.  One's  imagination  concerned  itself  with  just  how 
much  experience  made  up  her  past.  Clelia  was  the  bud, 
dewy,  cold,  thorned,  impudent,  but  not  daring;  imaginative 
and  knowing,  perhaps,  but  so  indifferent  to  the  live  coals 
of  passion  that  she  rather  despised  than  dreaded  them. 
One's  imagination  concerned  itself  with  what  she  might 
become  when  finally  she  bloomed  and  learned. 

Nancy  was  almost  as  tall  as  Larrick.  In  the  dance  their 
cheeks  met  often  by  intentional  accident  in  the  whirls,  her 
hair  fell  like  a  veil  against  his  face,  and  their  embrace  was 
almost  marital.  But  Clelia  was  only  as  high  as  his  heart; 
he  looked  down  into  her  hair  save  when  her  face  was  up- 
turned. One  of  her  arms  climbed  to  his  shoulder;  her  cheek 
was  against  his  breast.  She  seemed  frail,  but  she  was 
muscular  and  tireless,  and  the  dance  was  like  a  game,  a  romp 
to  music.  She  did  not  tempt  him  as  Nancy  did,  nor  chal- 
lenge his  prowess.  She  challenged  his  protection.  He  felt 
a  solemn  desire  to  keep  her  good — happy,  hilarious  even,  but 
good.  He  feared  that  her  recklessness  might  lead  her  into 
dangers  and  inspire  other  admirers  with  evil  plans. 

Her  wildness  was  like  a  thoroughbred  colt's,  a  lovable 
fractiousness,  with  a  promise  of  a  spirited  docility  when 
broken  to  the  bit.  The  nearest  he  came  to  desire  was  an 


228  BEAUTY 

eager  insanity  to  marry  her  at  once,  to  make  sure  of  her, 
for  her  own  sake  as  much  as  his.  Larrick  was  mad  about 
her. 

He  thanked  the  Lord  that  Norry  Frewin  had  no  claim  on 
her.  He  liked  Norry  as  a  man  likes  another,  without  regard 
to  his  morals,  but  he  realized  that  Norry  was  not  fit  to  be 
Clelia's  lover.  He  felt  that  he,  himself,  had  been  no  better 
than  Norry,  but  he  resolved  to  be,  for  Clelia's  sake.  He  was 
glad  that  he  had  gone  no  farther  with  Nancy  Fleet,  and  he 
vowed  that  he  would  break  with  her  at  once.  Already 
Clelia  had  reformed  him  more  than  a  preacher  could  have 
done,  and  had  reformed  him  by  appearing  in  tights,  then  in 
de'collete',  and  dancing  with  him  to  jazz  music! 

He  was  so  nearly  betrothed  to  her  in  his  mind  that  when 
the  too  handsome  man  who  had  danced  with  her  first  sud- 
denly came  across  their  bows  and  tried  to  cut  in,  Larrick 
greeted  his  confident  "May  I?"  with  a  sharp  "You  may 
not!"  and  swept  Clelia  out  of  his  reach. 

He  felt  toward  the  interloper  as  cordially  as  toward  a 
wooer  who  might  look  in  at  his  window  and  ask  for  his  wife. 

Clelia  laughed  into  his  shirt-front  and  looked  up  smiling 
to  say,  "Bully  for  you,  Mr.  Lochinvar." 

"My  name's  Larrick,"  said  Larrick,  anxious  that  there 
should  be  no  mistake. 

Clelia  laughed  again,  and  he  was  glad  that  his  name  gave 
her  pleasure. 

Once  or  twice  more  the  cutter-in  made  a  step  in  Larrick's 
direction,  but  Larrick  felt  that,  as  he  had  not  cut  in,  he 
would  not  be  cut  in  on.  Clelia  mockingly  waved  to  the 
fellow  and  called: 

"The  next  dance  is  yours,  Roy."  She  said  to  Larrick, 
"The  poor  fellow,  he's  had  an  awfully  unhappy  life." 

"He'll  have  a  worse  one  if  he  tries  to  rustle  my  heifer," 
Larrick  growled. 

"Oh,  Lord!  So  I'm  your  heifer!"  Clelia  cried.  "That's 
a  new  one  on  me." 

The  music  stopped  and  would  not  be  applauded  to  another 
repetition.  Then  a  dazzlingly  beautiful  woman  came  up  and 
seized  Clelia,  saying: 


CLELIA  229 

"  You're  coming  home  with  me  at  once,  my  dear." 

Clelia's  childhood  revealed  itself  in  a  pout. 

"Just  two  more  dances,  mother!" 

"Not  one!" 

"But  I  promised  the  next  one  to  Roy  Coykendall." 

"All  the  more  reason  for  your  coming  home  now,"  her 
mother  insisted,  a  little  grimly.  "You're  worn  out  with 
the  rehearsals  and  the  excitement." 

This  suggestion  had  its  effect.  Suddenly  Clelia  looked 
tired  and  glad  to  be  ordered  home.  She  did  not  introduce 
Larrick  to  her  mother,  but  put  out  her  hand  to  him  and  said : 

"  Come  on  over  and  see  me  soon — to-morrow.  Why  not? 
I've  got  some  nice  horses  and  dogs.  Good  night." 

Her  hand  slipped  from  his  clasp  and  she  was  gone,  with 
the  pathos  and  beauty  of  a  child  being  dragged  not  unwill- 
ingly up  to  bed. 

Larrick  was  still  shaken  with  the  realization  that  the  man 
who  had  danced  with  her  and  had  tried  to  take  her  from 
him  had  been  Roy  Coykendall.  What  was  that  wolf  doing 
in  this  fold?  What  right  had  he  sniffing  about  the  sacred 
Clelia? 

And  Clelia,  the  innocent,  the  debutante  at  the  sill  of  life, 
had  spoken  fondly  of  Coykendall,  had  clung  to  him  and 
endured  his  infamous  embrace. 

There  was  a  sudden  blaze  in  his  heart  now  of  that  killing 
fervor  Larrick  had  not  been  quite  able  to  feel  under  any  of 
what  Frank  Colby  calls  "the  imaginary  obligations"  to 
avenge  Mrs.  Coykendall  and  her  ruined  home. 

Forgetting  where  he  was,  he  set  out  upon  a  search  for 
Coykendall.  If  he  had  found  him  he  would  probably  have 
been  insane  enough  to  start  a  fight  with  him.  But  he  met 
Catherine  Squair  and  she  took  him  prisoner.  She  said, 
"Thanks,  I  will  dance  this  with  you,"  and  she  had  him  back- 
ing and  filling  about  the  room  before  he  could  explain 
that  he  was  looking  for  a  man  to  "get"  him.  Catherine 
was  all  knees  and  bust,  and  she  made  the  most  disconcerting 
love  to  Larrick  with  signals  that  he  would  not  answer. 

When  the  band  stopped  she  applauded,  still  clinging  to 


23o  BEAUTY 

his  arm,  and  the  band  seemed  to  be  inexhaustibly  good- 
natured.  Before  it  had  tired  of  dealing  out  encores,  Mrs. 
Frewin  appeared  at  the  ballroom  door  and  motioned  to  them 
and  said: 

"We're  going  home  now,  if  you  don't  mind." 
So  Larrick  went  out  with  Catherine  on  his  arm.     Luckily 
for  Coykendall,  he  did  not  cross  Larrick's  path  to  the  car. 
Larrick's  thoughts  were  as  black  as  the  inside  of  the 
limousine  and  he  took  no  pleasure  in  the  return.     The  roads 
were  as  beautiful  and  the  side  shows  the  same,  but  now  he 
was  being  dragged  away  from  action  to  respectability. 


CHAPTER  VII 

'"PHE  next  day  Larrick  was  left  to  his  own  devices  by  good 
1  luck — or  so  it  seemed  that  day,  for  luck  is  Janus-faced 
and  often  looks  peace  and  prosperity  as  you  approach  and 
war  and  regret  as  you  look  back. 

Norry  Frewin  was  called  to  New  York  by  some  mysterious 
telephone  message  that  left  him  white  and  red  and  dis- 
traught. He  apologized  to  Larrick  for  leaving  him  alone, 
and,  jumping  into  his  low,  rakish  racer,  dashed  for  the  city. 
His  parting  word  to  Larrick  was  to  help  himself  to  a  horse 
or  any  car  and  chauffeur  in  the  garage  and  go  to  any  of 
the  country  clubs  with  anybody  or  nobody  he  wanted  to. 

Larrick  called  after  him,  "Don't  worry  about  me,  and 
don't  let  her  buffalo  you!" 

Norry  threw  back  a  startled  glance  at  the  word  "her" 
and  ran  his  car  across  a  flower  bed  and  a  stone  urn  before 
he  could  whip  it  back  into  the  roadway.  So  long  as  his 
engine  was  not  checked  he  did  not  mind,  and  his  car  and 
its  chatter  dwindled  out  of  sight  and  hearing. 

Larrick  managed  to  evade  Catherine  Squair  and  get  to  the 
garage,  where  he  found  two  or  three  chauffeurs  polishing  the 
cars.  He  said,  with  transparent  ingenuousness,  "I  reckon 
you-all  are  too  busy  to  take  me  out  for  a  little  buggy  ride?" 

Three  chauffeurs  insisted  that  they  were  at  his  orders. 
He  chose  the  first  one  on  the  right.  When  they  passed  the 
house  Larrick  pretended  to  be  deaf  and  blind  as  Catherine 
Squair  waved  to  him  wildly  and  volunteered  to  come  along. 

The  chauffeur,  who  was  a  person  of  superior  intellect, 
guessed  that  if  Larrick  wanted  to  stop  for  her  he  would  say 
so,  and  he  was  also  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind  till  they  were  out 
of  the  gates.  Then  he  asked  if  there  were  any  particular 
place  Mr.  Larrick  would  like  to  drive.  Larrick  answered: 
"  Oh,  all  the  roads  are  right  good.  I  don't  reckon  you  know 


232  BEAUTY 

the  way  to — er — the — er — where  the  Blakeneys  live  at,  do 
you?" 

The  chauffeur  laughed  respectfully.  "Lord,  sir,  this  car 
knows  the  way  there.  If  I  was  to  leave  go  of  the  wheel 
I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if  she  went  by  herself.  Mr.  Norry 
always  uses  this  car  when  his  racer  is  busted,  as  it  usually  is." 

"I  see,"  said  Larrick.  "Well,  you  might  give  the  car  her 
head.  I  met  Mrs.  Blakeney  last  night  and — er — I  was 
invited  to  come  over  to-day,  so — er — well — " 

"Yessir,"  said  the  chauffeur.  The  very  back  of  his  ears 
announced  his  realization  that  Mrs.  Blakeney  was  not  the 
object  of  the  call.  Chauffeurs  inherit  the  terrible  knowledge 
and  cynicism  of  the  ancient  line  of  coachmen. 

The  road  ran  past  the  Lowries'.  It  was  the  same  road  that 
Larrick  had  traversed  the  night  before.  He  had  found 
it  fair  then,  though  it  was  taking  him  to  strange  people. 
Now  he  saw  it  in  the  sun  and  in  a  mood  of  trepidation.  He 
was  riding  to  his  choice  of  womankind  and  he  must  protect 
her  from  the  threat  of  Coykendall,  that  strange  man  whom 
women  loved  desperately. 

There  was  an  anxiety  in  the  beauty  of  the  scene  as  in 
Larrick's  heart.  Summer  was  in  full  glory  everywhere, 
but  there  were  already  warnings  that  summer  was  not 
eternal.  Here  and  there  a  green  tree  had  hung  out  a  red 
flag  to  indicate  that  a  great  bankrupt  auction  sale  would 
be  held  here  before  long.  All  this  riotous  extravagance,  this 
mad  revelry,  with  every  tree,  every  sapling,  every  weed, 
dressed  in  carnival  color — it  could  not  last,  it  could  end  only 
in  red  ruin  and  then  dun  penury  and  a  winter  of  misery. 

The  people  of  the  world  were  going  the  same  way.  The 
war  had  ended  like  the  harsh  winter  and  luxury  seemed  a 
necessity.  People  had  denied  themselves  so  much  so  long 
that  they  had  to  be  glad.  Prices  stayed  up ;  little  was  pro- 
duced; common  laborers  uncommonly  laboring  dressed  in 
silk  shirts  and  silk  hose  and  put  rings  on  their  tarry  fingers. 
But  there  were  hints  of  financial  autumn  now.  The  gorgeous 
reveler,  Ponzi,  who  took  in  millions  and  gave  back  millions  for 
bait,  had  broken  and  taken  several  banks  with  him.  Fac- 
tories began  to  shut  down  and  to  solve  the  strikes  for  higher 


CLELIA 


233 


wages  by  paying  none  at  all.  The  automobile  factories 
had  caught  up  with  the  demand  all  of  a  sudden ;  they  jammed 
on  the  brakes.  Prices  of  cars,  of  clothes,  of  shoes,  began  to 
fall,  like  leaves,  and  workmen  began  to  find  themselves  out 
of  jobs  and  out  of  demand.  When  they  applied  for  a 
vacancy  they  found  a  crowd  waiting.  Soon  it  would  again 
be  possible  to  buy  things  cheaply  if  only  one  had  any  money 
at  all. 

Larrick  was  like  the  rest  of  the  world.  He  had  stumbled 
upon  good  luck.  Good  luck  had  bitten  him  like  a  tarantula 
and  he  had  begun  to  dance  the  mad  tarantella. 

The  cowboy,  the  forlorn  cowboy  of  the  desert,  was  lolling 
here  in  a  millionaire's  limousine  and  feeling  that  he  must 
buy  a  better  one  for  himself.  He  was  on  his  way  to  woo  a 
millionaire's  daughter  and  he  would  try  to  dazzle  her  with 
his  fortune.  He  had  not  had  time  to  invest  what  was 
left  of  his  principal.  He  had  not  put  aside  the  appalling 
income  tax  the  government  would  exact  of  him  relentlessly. 

He  was  running  with  the  swells,  and  it  was  only  their 
hospitality  that  kept  him  from  outspending  them.  They 
were  too  lazy  or  too  indifferent  to  permit  him  to  requite 
their  hospitality.  But  the  time  would  come  when  almost 
unconsciously  they  would  expect  to  get  back  what  they  had 
invested  in  him.  For  the  rich,  being  the  prey  of  sponges, 
hate  a  sponge  above  all  other  animals  and  vegetables. 
Reciprocity  is  their  religion. 

Larrick  was  not  thinking  of  prudence  or  of  a  rainy  day. 
He  was  remembering  a  thing  that  Clelia  had  said  to  him 
as  they  talked: 

"I  love  the  West  so  much  better  than  the  East,"  she  had 
said. 

"You  been  West,  then?    When?" 

"Never.  But  I've  read  a  lot  about  it.  The  men  out 
there  are  so — so  clean  limbed  and  oh — clean  lifed!  They 
don't  have  the  weak,  milksoppy  ways  of  the  Eastern 
men." 

Larrick  realized  that  she  must,  indeed,  have  read  a  lot. 
He  knew  so  many  Western  men  who  were  only  as  clean 
limbed  as  their  sweat  kept  them — and  a  sweat  of  heat,  not 


234  BEAUTY 

of  toil.  As  for  clean  lives,  he  knew  men  and  women  who 
led  them,  but  he  knew  enough  who  did  not.  As  far  as  he 
could  see,  people  were  people  regardless  of  climate  or 
geography.  Every  Eastern  vice  and  virtue  flourished  in  the 
West  in  equal  measure. 

But  one  thing  the  West  he  knew  lacked  utterly — not  the 
West  of  California  or  the  big  cities,  but  the  heroic  wilderness 
life.  It  lacked  art  and  artificial  beauty. 

It  was  all  very  well  to  glorify  horses  and  cattle  and  horse- 
men and  cattlemen.  They  and  the  pioneers  who  leveled  the 
sierras  and  redeemed  the  deserts  and  cowed  the  savages 
deserved  all  the  reverence  they  received  and  more.  But 
their  work  was  a  means  to  an  end,  not  the  end. 

The  glory  of  the  prospector  and  the  miner  was  not  in  the 
bitter  work  of  the  pick  and  the  fierce  life  of  the  pine-shack 
towns,  but  in  the  things  the  gold  would  buy.  The  beauty 
of  the  tent  was  that  it  led  to  the  building  of  palaces.  The 
greatness  of  the  trapper  and  the  Indian  slayer  was  that  they 
cleared  the  way  for  the  railroad  and  the  parlor  car. 

Out  there  in  the  life  he  had  known  the  women  wore  rough 
things  and  lived  in  a  brave  simplicity.  There  were  no 
palaces,  no  symphonic  orchestras,  no  art  galleries,  no 
cathedrals,  no  skyscrapers,  no  paintings,  plays,  statuary, 
no  fashion  plates,  no  formal  gardens,  no  marble  pools,  no 
libraries,  no  tapestries,  jewels,  no  splendor  at  all. 

As  Larrick  saw  it,  the  splendor  of  life  that  preachers  de- 
nounced and  novelists  traduced  was  something  well  worth 
working  for.  He  loved  the  superb  towers,  the  gleaming 
shop  windows,  the  glistening  Fifth  Avenue,  the  ladies  with 
the  dukes'  ransoms  on  and  off  their  backs,  the  people  who 
had  traveled  and  seen  masterpieces  of  man's  work  and 
nature's,  the  rich  food  in  restaurants  of  high  prices  and  high 
delights. 

Larrick  had  dwelt  all  too  close  with  Nature.  He  had 
slept  in  her  bosom  and  fought  for  the  bitter  milk  in  her  dugs, 
and  had  found  her  as  mean  a  mother  as  a  she-wolf.  He 
liked  the  things  made  with  men's  hands  and  with  the  gentle, 
clever  hands  of  women. 

Yet  he  was  afraid  of  these  wealthy  people  and  things; 


CLELIA  235 

their  amusements  were  as  laborious  to  him  as  jokes  in  a 
foreign  tongue. 

He  wondered  what  he  would  have  to  learn  to  keep  the  pace 
with  Clelia.  He  had  taken  up  dancing  for  Nancy's  sake  and 
found  it  mighty  handy  with  Clelia.  But  suppose  she  pro- 
posed a  game  of  tennis  ?  He  had  never  held  a  racquet  in  his 
hand.  Or  golf!  He  did  not  know  a  putter  from  a  bogie. 
He  had  heard  that  the  swells  were  always  playing  bridge. 
And  he  did  not  know  bridge.  She  might  as  well  ask  him  to 
play  the  pianna.  Poker,  of  course.  But  poker  was  for 
cheap  saloons  and  for  the  bunk  house.  As  well  expect  to  be 
asked  to  shoot  craps ! 

He  was  in  so  great  a  fright  that  he  would  have  cravenly 
told  the  chauffeur  to  drive  on  past  the  Blakeneys  if  the  car 
had  not  suddenly  swerved  into  a  gateway  and  up  to  a  palace 
of  still  a  third  kind,  entirely  different  from  the  Frewins' 
and  the  Lowries'  homes.  It  was  funny  how  many  ways 
there  were  of  being  magnificent. 

Larrick  could  not  have  told  what  school  of  architecture 
the  Blakeney  mansion  belonged  to,  or  if  it  belonged  to  any. 
If  its  periods  were  mixed,  so  were  his — if  he  had  any. 

He  was  so  afraid  of  the  house  that  he  would  still  have  told 
the  chauffeur  to  make  a  dash  for  it,  but  a  butler  or  something 
ran  out  and  opened  the  door  of  the  car  and  hoisted  his  elbow 
out  to  the  platform,  or  whatever  it  was,  of  the  house — which 
suggested  a  big,  immense  railroad  station  to  Larrick. 

The  usher,  who  evidently  knew  the  chauffeur,  robbed 
Larrick  of  his  last  chance  of  escape  by  saying: 

"Mr.  Larrick?" 

Larrick  stared  a  yes,  and  the  man  led  him  into  the  wide- 
open  door  and  said : 

"Miss  Blakeney  was  expecting  you,  sir.  This  way,  if  you 
please." 

He  pried  Larrick's  hat  and  stick  from  his  hands,  paused 
at  the  entrance  to  a  room  that  seemed  to  be  part  of  an  art 
gallery  a  mile  long,  and  said  to  nobody  in  particular : 

"Mr.  Larrick." 

Larrick  was  impelled  into  the  room  and  paused,  seeing 
nobody,  and  trying  to  remember  how  you  shake  hands  with 
16 


236  BEAUTY 

swells  and  what  you  said  first.  He  heard  odd  sounds  and 
a  voice  he  could  not  believe  saying  words  he  could  not 
have  expected  there. 

"Come  on,  you  seven!    Where  is  you  at?" 

"Dog-on  you  liT  Joe,  come  a-runnin'  to  yo'  mammy!" 

This  was  the  language  of  the  crap  shooters  who  knelt  in 
back  alleys  and  rolled  the  bones  with  one  eye  hung  over 
their  shoulders  for  the  cops. 

Larrick  wondered  if  some  of  the  stablemen  had  sneaked 
into  the  parlor  to  gamble.  As  he  wondered,  he  heard  Puck 
speak  from  nowhere  once  more: 

' '  Hello !     Come  on  over  here,  why  don't  you  ? " 

He  moved  cautiously  round  an  enormous  priory  table 
and  descried  Clelia.  He  felt  bewitched  again.  For  there 
she  was  sitting  on  the  floor  among  a  knot  of  young  men  and 
women,  all  frantically  excited  over  the  next  fall  of  the  dice 
she  was  shaking  in  her  exquisite  clenched  hand.  She  was  too 
much  excited  to  look  up.  She  shook  the  dice,  blew  on  them, 
whispered  to  them,  and  said: 

"Now's  the  time,  little  Joe.  Don't  keep  me  waitin'. 
We  gotta  buy  the  baby  a  new  shirt.  Jump  for  me,  Josie ! " 

One  of  the  young  men  sprawled  at  her  side  repeated  his 
malediction,  trembling  with  earnestness. 

"Seven  she  is  this  time  for  sho'." 

A  gorgeously  beautiful  girl  in  the  attitude  of  a  witch  over 
a  caldron  groaned: 

"Go  on  and  shoot.     I  need  the  money." 

Larrick  noted  piles  of  bills  like  green  leaves  on  the  autum- 
nal rug.  Finally  Clelia  spilled  the  dice,  bent  to  glare  at 
them,  then  shrieked  and  rocked  with  triumph  as  she  pointed 
to  the  two  deuces  she  had  called  for : 

"Read  'em  and  weep!  Little  Joe  is  workin'  for  his  lady 
love!" 

Then  her  greedy  hands  ran  along  the  piles  of  money  and 
gathered  them  in,  leaving  a  stake  for  the  next  throw. 

Now  she  paused  to  look  up  and  put  up  her  left  hand  to 
Larrick.  He  hurried  to  it,  to  lift  her.  But  she  did  not  rise. 
She  dragged  him  to  his  knees.  He  was  scarlet  with  confu- 
sion. She  said: 


CLELIA  237 

"  Mighty  nice  of  you  to  come.     Do  you  shoot  craps  ? " 

"Well,  I — well,  I  used  to  a  good  deal." 

"Great!  I  need  a  lot  of  money  this  month,  and  they 
tell  me  you're  rich.  So  set  in.  Move  over,  Jake,  and 
make  room  for  Mr.  Larrick — of  Texas,  a  partic'lar  pal  of 

mine.  Shake  hands  with  me  lady  friend,  Miss ,  Miss 

,  Miss ,  and  Mr. and  Mr. " 

She  gave  them  names  and  they  gave  him  their  hands, 
but  he  did  not  catch  a  single  name.  The  two  young  men 
wrung  his  fingers  warmly  and  warned  him  to  hang  on  to 
his  watch,  as  Clelia  had  such  a  run  of  luck  they  were  sure  the 
dice  were  loaded. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

T  ARRICK  was  stupefied  at  finding  himself  squatting  on 
\-j  a  palace  floor,  shooting  craps  with  a  bunch  of  princesses. 
He  need  not  have  been  surprised,  for  dice  are  as  old  as  man. 
Mark  Antony  shot  craps  with  Cleopatra  and  Helen  of  Troy 
probably  played  with  the  kuboi,  shrieking,  "Come,  Aphro- 
dite!" or,  "Come,  dog!"  according  to  whether  she  or  her 
adversary  spun  the  cubes  as  lustily  as  Clelia  called  for  "the 
eighter  "  or  the  "  box  cars  "  and  hated  the  dirty  little  "  craps." 
Roman  emperors  cheated  and  the  favorites  of  French  kings 
knew  the  frenzy  of  the  blundering  tumblers. 

But  the  sudden  passion  for  dice  that  swept  American 
society  in  1920  was  not  derived  from  classic  or  romantic 
times.  It  came  from  the  negroes. 

Since  we  have  taken  from  the  slaves  and  their  descendants 
the  folk  songs,  the  banjo,  the  ragtime,  the  jazz,  and  any 
number  of  dances,  it  was  logical  that  the  gambling  devices 
should  be  also  appropriated. 

And  since  gambling  is  a  sin  inextinguishable,  after  ages  of 
denunciation,  it  can  matter  little  whether  the  mania  makes 
use  of  the  devil's  visiting  cards,  or  the  horse  race,  the  fetits 
chevaux,  the  pill  that  dances  upon  the  wheel,  the  faro  box, 
or  the  stock  market. 

It  mattered  to  Larrick,  however,  and  he  was  so  shocked 
at  such  goings-on  in  a  respectable,  or  at  least  a  wealthy, 
home  that  he  could  not  feel  at  ease,  though  here  at  last 
he  was  on  familiar  ground. 

Clelia  kept  the  dice  for  a  long  time  and  won  everybody's 
cash  while  it  lasted.  Then  she  lent  money  to  the  girls  who 
were  broke  and  won  it  back  again.  She  played  with  a  fiend- 
ish zest,  pounding  the  floor  in  ecstasy  as  the  number  she 
called  for  obeyed  her  incantation. 

Her  voice  was  shrill  for  "Sixty  days!"  or  "Ninety  days!" 


CLELIA  239 

for  "Big  Dick!"  or  the  "Eighter."  She  shrieked  for  the 
Seven  when  its  arrival  would  bring  luck  and  howled  at  it 
when  it  came  at  the  wrong  time.  When  she  lost  the  dice 
at  last  she  had  a  little  mountain  of  bills  and  silver  and 
copper  at  her  side. 

Larrick  was  seven  dollars  to  the  bad  when  the  dice  fell  to 
him,  and  by  this  time  he  had  lost  some  of  his  chill.  Also 
two  of  the  girls  and  one  of  the  young  men  had  been  cleaned 
out  and  had  run  into  debt  so  deeply  that  they  complained 
that  their  feet  had  gone  to  sleep  and  deserted  the  game. 

Larrick  felt  an  ambition  to  drive  the  others  away,  too, 
and  he  played  with  an  eagerness  remembered  from  many 
a  contest  with  cowboys  or  greasers.  He  snapped  his  fingers 
and  summoned  the  numbers  he  wanted  with  Texan  objurga- 
tions that  were  new  to  Clelia,  who  rejoiced  in  a  new  cuss 
word  as  much  as  in  a  new  Paris  hat. 

Clelia  was  insatiable.  When  only  she  and  Larrick  were 
left  she  still  insisted  on  playing  and  they  had  a  duel  to  the 
death.  Her  luck  held  for  a  while  and  it  made  him  happy 
to  lose  to  her.  But  the  time  came  when  in  spite  of  himself 
he  took  Clelia's  cash  from  her.  This  was  intensely  em- 
barrassing, and  if  he  could  have  cheated  himself  he  would 
have  been  glad  to.  She  suspected  once  or  twice  that  he  was 
not  playing  his  best  (though  it  might  seem  that  skill  had 
no  part  here)  and  she  flared  up  with  such  unsuspected  fury 
that  he  felt  he  was  compelled  in  all  gallantry  to  reduce  her 
to  poverty. 

Being  human,  she  did  not  really  enjoy  the  delapsing  of  her 
winnings.  There  is  always  a  certain  pride  in  a  streak  of 
good  luck  and  a  certain  humiliation  and  injustice  in  a  streak 
of  bad. 

She  was  a  good  sport,  but  her  hilarity  did  not  continue. 
She  grew  frenzied  in  her  cries  for  the  number  she  needed. 
She  tossed  the  dice  this  way  and  that,  shot  them  intermi- 
nably, pleaded  with  them  to  be  good.  But  nothing  availed 
to  save  her  money  from  Larrick.  And  yet  she  seemed  to 
respect  him  increasingly  as  he  destroyed  her  prosperity. 

The  others  had  left  them  entirely  alone.  One  couple  was 
in  the  music  room  at  the  piano;  another  was  on  the  lawn, 


24o  BEAUTY 

practicing  putts  with  an  old  golf  ball,  and  two  were  shrieking 
on  the  tennis  court. 

Only  Clelia  and  Larrick  crouched  alone  on  the  floor  and 
bandied  negroid  phrases.  He  felt  that  it  was  a  wicked  waste 
of  opportunity  and  no  way  at  all  to  entertain  or  be  enter- 
tained by  so  fair  a  girl.  But  she  would  not  stop  till  her 
last  bill  was  lost,  her  final  silver  had  trickled  away,  and  her 
ultimate  copper  had  gone  into  his  clutch. 

She  was  game  to  the  last  and  practiced  everything  but 
caution.  That  was  a  word  left  out  of  her  lexicon. 

She  wanted  to  borrow  money  of  Larrick  and  offered  her 
I.  O.  U.,  but  he  told  her  he  would  not  trust  her.  She  said 
she  could  get  money  from  the  butler,  but  Larrick  begged  off. 
He  pointed  to  his  loot  and  said: 

"What  can  I  buy  with  all  this?" 

She  smiled  with  unexpected  winsomeness  and  sighed: 

"How  sweetly  old  fashioned!  But  you  can't  buy  me  any- 
thing with  the  money  I've  lost.  What  kind  of  a  gambler 
do  you  think  I  am?  You  might  help  me  up,  though." 

He  lifted  her  to  her  feet,  but  they  were  so  numb  that  she 
could  hardly  stand  on  them.  She  clung  to  him  while  she 
stamped  her  tingling  heels  back  to  life. 

Suddenly  she  gave  a  little  cry,  forgetting  her  own  torment. 

A  little  brown  Pekingese  came  running  into  the  room, 
searching  frantically  here  and  there,  and  looking  about  with 
eyes  of  tragic  inquiry. 

Clelia  dropped  to  her  knees  and  called,  "Empress,  you 
poor  angel,  come  to  your  mother!" 

The  dog  ran  to  her  and  consented  to  be  taken  in  her 
arms  for  a  moment.  She  gazed  into  Clelia's  gaze  with  the 
steady  earnestness  of  Pekingese  and  moaned  and  whimpered. 
She  could  not  find  comfort  in  Clelia's  sympathy, and,  growing 
restless,  squirmed  and  struggled  to  be  free,  her  big  eyes  wet 
and  somber.  She  began  her  search  anew  and  hurried  from 
great  room  to  great  room. 

"The  poor  soul!  She's  almost  mad  with  grief,"  Clelia 
explained.  "You  see,  she's  too  small  to  have  any  puppies — 
they  call  her  a  sleeve  dog — but  she  got  away  at  the  wrong 
time  and —  Well,  we  were  terribly  anxious,  for  we  adore  her. 


CLELIA  241 

We  had  the  best  vets  to  watch  her,  but  when  the  time  came 
— I  was  alone  with  her — she  suffered  horribly.  But  I'm 
quite  an  expert  in  helping  poor  bitches  in  their  hour  of  need, 
and  I  did  everything  that  could  be  done. 

"In  place  of  the  litter  of  little  mice  these  Pekes  usually 
have,  she  had  just  one.  And  I  had  a  battle  for  that.  It 
was  too  big.  I  was  twenty  minutes  with  it  and  then  it 
was  born  dead.  So  of  course  I  had  it  taken  away.  By 
the  time  the  little  Empress  was  strong  enough  to  look  for  it 
it  was  gone.  She  can't  understand,  and  I  can't  tell  her. 
Her  little  heart  is  breaking  with  motherhood  and  she  has 
hunted  the  farm  over  for  days.  She  can  hear  her  child 
crying  for  her,  I  suppose,  and  she's  aching  to  comfort  it. 
But  it's  dead.  What  a  terrible  thing  to  be  dead — even 
for  a  puppy  dog.  At  night  I  keep  the  Empress  in  my  room, 
but  she  runs  round  all  the  time,  searching  and  whining  all 
night  long. 

"Strange!  She  never  had  a  baby.  Nobody  told  her  any- 
thing. She  only  knows  that  she  wants  her  child  and  she 
can't  have  it.  It's  dead.  '  Dead '  is  a  terrible  word,  don't 
you  think — when  even  little  animals  like  that  go  about  for 
days  with  their  eyes  full  of  tears  and  their  hearts  full  of 
pain?" 

She  fell  silent  a  long  while  and  Larrick  did  not  know 
what  to  say.  He  loved  her  more  in  this  helpless  grief  than 
in  any  other  mood.  But  it  hurt  him  bitterly  not  to  be  able 
to  help  her. 

His  arms  and  hands  wanted  to  go  to  her  rescue  and  gather 
her  in,  but  his  mind  was  wiser  than  they.  He  could  clasp 
her  close  to  dance  with  her,  but  he  must  not  put  a  finger  on 
her  when  she  suffered. 

The  butler  came  in  upon  his  quandary  to  throw  him  into  a 
fiercer  distress.  He  said : 

"Excuse  me,  Miss  Clelia,  Mr.  Coykendall  is  on  the  phone. 
Shall  I  switch  him  on  here?" 

Clelia  nodded  and  went  to  a  telephone  in  a  corner,  and 
Larrick  had  to  endure  the  sound  of  her  sympathy  for  another 
dog.  He  heard  her  say: 

"Hello,  Roy!  .  .  .  Yes,  this  is  me.    Where  are  you?  .  .  . 


242  BEAUTY 

Why  don't  you  come  over?  .  .  .  Oh,  that's  too  bad!  I 
expected  you.  .  .  .  Oh,  fine!  .  .  .  Oh,  that's  wonderful! 
.  .  .  You  poor  boy,  what  a  relief  it  will  be!  Call  me  up  as 
soon  as  you  know.  Good-by ! ' ' 

She  hung  up  the  receiver  and  turned  to  Larrick.  Her  eyes 
were  tenderer  than  before,  but  he  didn't  like  the  look  in 
them  now. 

"You  haven't  met  Roy  Coykendall,  have  you?" 

Larrick  shook  his  head. 

"He's  awfully  nice  but  terribly  unlucky.  He's  always 
falling  in  love  with  the  wrong  women.  Some  people  say 
he's  a  cad  and  a  fool.  But  if  he  is,  how  can  he  help  that? 
It  isn't  his  fault,  is  it  ? 

"Well,  his  wife —  I  don't  know  what's  the  matter  with 
her,  but  she  doesn't  make  him  happy  and  he's  unutterably 
wretched.  He  has  no  home  life.  Some  people  say  he's  a 
rotten  hound,  and  maybe  he  is,  but  if  he  is,  how  can  he  help 
that,  either? 

"The  poor  little  Empress  there  can't  help  being  a  dog, 
and  she  can't  help  being  heartbroken  over  a  poor  little  dead 
pup.  So  why  should  people  be  blamed  for  being  unhappy 
just  because  their  unhappiness  seems  foolish  to  other  people? 
Everybody  is  always  blaming  everybody  else  for  what  they 
can't  help.  It  seems  to  me  more  foolish  to  go  blaming 
people  and  being  stingy  with  your  sympathy  than  it  is  to 
suffer  foolishly. 

"Well,  Roy  has  been  trying  to  persuade  his  wife  to  give 
him  his  freedom  and  take  her  own.  She  didn't  want  to 
for  the  longest  time.  And  that  seems  funny,  too.  Seems  to 
me  if  I  had  a  dozen  husbands  and  they  all  said,  'I  don't 
love  you  any  more,  please  let  me  go,'  I'd  break  my  neck 
showing  them  the  door.  But  Mrs.  Coykendall  was  the 
clinging  kind. 

"I  don't  know  all  the  particulars,  but,  anyway,  Roy  has 
just  telephoned  me  that  she  has  consented  to  divorce  him 
quietly.  He  is  willing  to  take  all  the  blame  and  give  her  a 
big  alimony  and  all  that,  and  I  think  it's  mighty  white  of 
him. 

"But  most  people  loathe  him.     That's  why  I  like  him. 


CLELIA  243 

The  minute  I  find  everybody  running  anybody  down  I 
begin  to  feel  kindly  toward  him.  Don't  you?  And  when 
people  object  to  my  running  with  Roy  Coykendall  and  tell 
me  what  a  rotter  he  is,  I  always  say,  'Everything  you  say 
against  him  makes  me  like  him  all  the  better.'  I  don't  know, 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  that's  the  only  decent  way  to  feel. 
Doesn't  it  seem  so  to  you?" 

Larrick  was  in  an  excruciation  of  discomfort.  If  he  told 
Clelia  what  he  knew  of  Coykendall,  he  would  endear  the 
beast  still  more  to  her.  If  he  kept  silent,  she  would  go  on 
liking  him. 

There  was  something  fiendish  about  the  situation,  yet  there 
seemed  something  divine  in  Clelia's  quality  of  far-seeing 
mercy. 

He  was  so  distraught  that  he  made  an  excuse  for  going 
back  to  the  Frewins'.  All  the  way  he  raged  against  Coyken- 
dall for  his  double-dealing  and  his  insolence  in  paying  court 
to  Clelia.  When  he  reached  the  house  he  found  a  letter 
awaiting  him,  forwarded  from  his  New  York  hotel. 

It  was  from  Nancy  Fleet,  and  Larrick  felt  guilt  added  to 
his  other  miseries.  Who  was  he  to  be  accusing  another  man 
of  disloyalty? 


CHAPTER  IX 

IN  those  days  there  was  still  fierce  complaint  of  the  Post- 
master-General of  the  United  States,  as  if  Postmasters- 
General  were  expected  to  carry  all  letters  in  person. 

But  however  promptly  a  letter  may  be  conveyed,  it  often 
arrives  an  era  too  late.  People's  souls  change  overnight, 
like  milk  in  a  thunderstorm,  and  though  they  wear  the  same 
names  they  are  quite  other  people. 

So  the  letter  that  Nancy  Fleet  wrote  from  Newport  to 
Gad  Larrick  in  Westchester  found  him  with  a  new  heart, 
though  his  face  and  form  were  unchanged.  If  she  had  tele- 
graphed him,  her  message  would  have  reached  the  man  she 
left  and  found  him  lonely  for  her. 

But  in  the  few  days  of  her1  absence  he  had  succumbed  to 
the  influence  of  Clelia.  In  the  thunderstorm  of  her  beauty, 
the  milk  of  his  kindliness  was  changed  to  a  clabber  of  remorse 
and  confusion. 

The  warmth  of  Nancy's  love  would  have  flattered  and 
fascinated  him  two  days  ago.  Now  he  hated  himself  with- 
out loving  Nancy  the  more  for  his  sense  of  shame. 

He  took  the  letter  to  his  room  and  opened  it  guiltily. 

DEAR  GAD  LARRICK, — Newport  seems  to  need  you  as  much  as 
you  need  Newport.  I  can't  help  looking  at  the  old  town  and  the 
old  ocean  through  your  eyes.  You  have  talked  to  me  so  much 
about  the  waste  of  misplaced  rain  water  in  the  world  that  I  should 
like  to  hear  your  comments  on  the  Atlantic.  I  believe  you  told 
me  you  had  never  seen  it  except  from  Coney  Island.  From  Bailey's 
Beach  it  is  quite  different.  The  warships  would  interest  you,  too. 

But  I  am  consumed  with  an  ambition  to  see  you  shoot  up  the 
Casino  and  lasso  the  swell  mavericks — or  do  I  mean  mavericks? 

Anyway,  the  fact  is  that  I  take  no  comfort  in  the  familiar  follies 
of  this  place  since  I  have  fallen  under  your  spell.  I  spend  my  time 
vainly  trying  to  roll  cigarettes  with  my  left  hand.  I  need  your 
masterly  help.  I  am  pining  away  for  you,  and  my  friends  are 


CLELIA  245 

worried.  Telegraph  me  when  you  arrive.  My  mother  and 
father  offer  you  the  freedom  of  this  big  house.  From  your  room 
in  the  tower  you  can  look  out  for  miles  across  a  desert  of  water 
that  would  remind  you  of  your  own  dear  Brewster  County  by  its 
difference.  Do  come  soon. 

Yours,  I  don't  know  how  far, 

NANCY  FLEET. 

By  the  way,  don't  stop  to  kill  Roy  Coykendall.  Poor  Louise 
has  decided  to  accept  the  beast's  magnanimous  offer  to  suppress  his 
alleged  "evidence,"  take  all  the  blame,  give  her  evidence  against 
himself,  and  let  her  divorce  him.  The  affair  will  be  pulled  off 
quietly  in  a  little  country  town.  This  is  strictly  entre  nous. 

Larrick  wondered  what  entre  nous  meant,  but  did  not  dare 
to  ask.  He  assumed  that  it  was  something  peculiarly 
atrocious,  since  it  had  to  be  put  in  Latin. 

Nancy  had  released  him  from  the  duty  of  obliterating 
Coykendall  for  Mrs.  Coykendall 's  sake.  Yet  now  he  felt 
the  impulse  seething  in  him  to  remove  the  man,  not  as 
punishment,  but  as  a  precaution  on  his  own  behalf.  For 
now  the  venomous  Coykendall,  having  stung  his  wife  to 
death,  was  coiled  in  the  path  of  Clelia. 

Nothing  helps  us  through  an  ordeal  of  self-contempt  so 
well  as  a  grievance  against  somebody  else.  That  is  why  an 
outburst  of  anger  is  often  the  most  sincere  expression  of  a 
deep,  an  intolerable,  contrition. 

Poor  Nancy  with  her  postscript  had  proffered  Larrick  a 
remedy,  or  at  least  a  diversion,  that  helped  him  to  forget  her 
and  to  turn  his  passion  of  chivalry  toward  her  rival. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  familiar  influence  of  love  that 
the  impropriety  of  caring  for  Clelia  made  her  all  the  more 
important  to  his  miserable  soul. 

Norry  Frewin  did  not  come  home  that  night,  nor  all  the 
next  day.  His  mother  fretted  for  him  at  the  table,  where  his 
place  waited. 

It  surprised  Larrick  to  find  a  wealthy  mother  grieving 
like  a  poor  mother.  Mrs.  Frewin  came  dangerously  near  to 
chanting  the  gospel  hymn,  "Oh,  where  is  my  wandering  boy 
to-night?"  Like  most  other  fiction  readers,  Larrick  had 


246  BEAUTY 

somehow  absorbed  the  notion  that  wealth  substitutes  a  new 
set  of  emotions  for  the  set  allotted  to  plain  people. 

Mr.  Frewin  tried  to  comfort  his  wife  by  a  ridiculing  refer- 
ence to  experience. 

"Good  Lord!  honey,  you  ought  to  be  used  to  the  cub's 
absences  by  now.  He's  spent  the  least  possible  time  at 
home  ever  since  he  was  big  enough  to  toddle  away." 

"But  to  leave  his  friend  and  his  guest  alone  here  to  the 
mercies  of  two  old  frumps  like  us!"  Mrs.  Frewin  moaned. 
"He  would  never  do  that  if  he  weren't  in  serious  trouble." 

She  had  the  butler  call  up  his  apartment  and  all  of  his 
clubs  that  she  knew  of,  but  he  was  not  to  be  found.  At 
length,  however,  a  telegram  came  in  by  telephone  apologizing 
for  his  unavoidable  detention  in  town  on  important  business, 
hoping  that  his  mother  would  not  worry,  and  that  Larrick 
would  amuse  himself  as  best  he  could. 

Mrs.  Frewin  was  relieved  of  a  mountain  of  anxiety. 
Mr.  Frewin  growled: 

"  I  wonder  what  her  important  name  is." 

His  wife  gave  him  a  round  scolding  for  his  cynicism,  but 
Larrick  was  convinced  that  there  was  a  bit  of  fatherly 
intuition  in  the  old  man's  remark. 

Larrick  thought  of  the  girl  that  Clelia  had  surprised  in 
Norry's  apartment  on  the  day  of  her  untimely  and  indiscreet 
ascent  upon  him.  Inside  his  soul,  Larrick  offered  to  bet 
himself  any  amount  that  the  girl  was  making  trouble  for 
Norry. 

When  the  truth  transpired,  his  guess  was  proved  correct. 
But  for  the  moment  it  served  mainly  to  allay  the  fever  of 
his  self-disrespect.  Assuming  that  Norry  was  involved  with 
another  girl,  then  Norry's  claim  on  Clelia  was  practically  nil; 
therefore  Larrick  was  not  treacherous  to  his  friend  in  loving 
Clelia.  His  treachery  to  Nancy  remained,  but  it  was  some- 
thing to  have  cut  his  villainies  down  by  fifty  per  cent.  He 
was  sorely  in  need  of  that  diminution. 

He  could  smile  a  little  more  honestly  now  while  Mrs. 
Frewin  talked  on  and  on  about  her  son,  pouring  out  anecdotes 
of  him  from  his  babyhood,  all  of  them  vastly  to  his  credit. 
When  she  had  gone  round  the  rosary  of  her  love  she  was 


CLELIA  247 

relieved  enough  to  face  sleep  with  calm,  kissed  Larrick  and 
'  her  husband  good  night,  and  went  upstairs  to  bed. 

Larrick  could  just  remember  the  taste  of  his  own  mother's 
good-night  kisses  and  the  sight  of  her  slow  and  heavy  climb 
to  her  reward  of  sleep  after  toil. 

His  mother  had  been  a  pioneer;  her  clothes  were  calico, 
her  hands  rough  from  cooking  and  suds,  and  from  the 
needles  that  filled  the  workbasket  every  night  with  a  dark 
fruit  of  mended  things.  The  stairs  in  that  old  home  were 
of  wood  and  the  carpet  missing,  and  Larrick  remembered 
her  pityingly  now  as  he  contrasted  what  she  had  been  with 
this  other  mother  who  had  never  known  hardship  or  the 
want  of  luxury.  Yet  there  was  a  kinship  between  her  and 
this  sad  Mrs.  Frewin  in  the  silken  dinner  gown,  who  mounted 
the  velveted  treads  heavily  and  dragged  along  the  mahogany 
rail  an  old  hand  that  twinkled  with  diamonds.  Diamonds, 
after  all,  seemed  only  tears  that  do  not  dry  away  and  vanish 
— the  gleaming,  lasting  monuments  of  tears. 

Larrick  turned  to  surprise  in  Mr.  Frewin's  eyes  a  look  of 
tender  sorrow.  He  had  bought  his  wife  everything  he  could; 
but  unruffled  bliss  has  never  been  put  on  sale.  As  if  to  es- 
cape from  what  he  could  not  help  to  what  he  could,  Mr. 
Frewin  turned  and  asked  Larrick  to  sit  and  talk  awhile. 
He  fetched  from  a  cabinet  a  box  of  his  best  cigars,  long 
cylinders  of  a  dusty  russet.  Mr.  Frewin  had  them  tailored 
to  fit  his  taste  in  Havana  from  selected,  seasoned  leaves, 
and  even  Larrick's  illiterate  nostril  could  perceive  the 
delicate  nurture  of  their  flavor. 

When  the  two  censers  were  fuming,  Frewin  broached  with 
some  hesitation  a  subject  he  plainly  felt  to  be  difficult. 

"  My  boy,  I  hope  you  won't  think  me  impertinent,  but — " 

"Good  Lord!  sir,  you  couldn't  be  impertinent  to  me." 

"Thanks.  I  don't  want  to  be,  but — well — as  I've  said 
before — I  can  never  repay  what  we  owe  you  for  saving 
Norry.  You  have  heard  enough  about  him  to-night  from, 
his  mother  to  realize  that  if  you  hadn't  saved  him  from  that 
desperado  there  would  have  been  one  pitifully  broken  soul 
mourning  for  him  here — two,  in  fact,  for  Norry  is  every- 
thing to  me,  my  legacy  to  the  world,  my — well,  everything 


248  BEAUTY 

He's  a  bit  wild,  but  he's  all  right;  a  glutton  for  mischief,  a 
fool  with  the  girls  and  the  women,  but  the  real  thing  in  the 
long  run. 

"You  gave  him  back  to  us.  We've  adopted  you  into  our 
hearts  as  a  kind  of  a  son — with  all  the  rights  of  a  son,  but 
none  of  the  obligations.  We  were  disappointed  to  find  that 
we  couldn't  pay  you  Norry's  ransom  in  cash.  You've  got 
such  a  lot  of  it. 

"And  that's  what  I'm  getting  to.  Your  money  —  what 
about  it?  Money  costs  money,  makes  money,  loses  money. 
It's  a  very  expensive  thing  if  it's  not  handled  just  right. 
You  don't  show  any  signs  of  being  a  miser.  I  don't  know  how 
much  of  a  spendthrift  you  are.  The  main  thing  is,  how  much 
of  a  financier  are  you?" 

"As  a  financier,"  Larrick  stammered,  "I'm  as  wise  as  a 
locoed  steer." 

Mr.  Frewin  nodded  and  went  on: 

"Don't  hesitate  to  tell  me  to  mind  my  own  business  if  I 
offend  you,  but  all  sorts  of  people,  some  of  them  very 
wealthy,  come  to  me  for  financial  advice  and —  Perhaps 
you  wouldn't  mind  telling  me  what  you  plan  to  do  with  your 
good  fortune — unless  that's  a  secret." 

Larrick  flushed  and  grinned. 

"  It's  a  secret  from  me,  sir.  I've  been  wanting  to  have  a 
good  time  first  for  a  while.  You  see,  I  got  kind  of  baked  out 
and  starved  lean  down  there  in  the  alkali,  and  the  money 
came  so  easy  I  thought  I'd  see  a  little  of  the  world  and  rest 
my  eyes  on  handsome  things  awhile.  When  it's  gone  I  can 
always  go  back." 

"But  if  you  manage  it  carefully  you  won't  have  to  go 
back.  Your  money  will  work  for  you  if  you'll  let  it,  and 
make  a  lot  more.  Money  breeds  money  when  it  gets  a 
chance.  The  capital-and-labor  problem  resolves  itself  down 
to  that  in  the  end.  Some  people  are  good  money  farmers 
and  some  are  poor.  The  toilers,  as  they  are  called,  have  a 
hard  time,  and  sorrow  and  deprivation  enough,  God  knows; 
but  God  also  knows  that  the  rich  have  hard  times  and 
heartbreaks  and  deprivations  not  easy  to  bear.  Nothing 
mankind  can  do  will  ever  provide  happiness,  and  when  your 


CLELIA  249 

labor  unions  and  Socialist  ideals  and  Bolshevisms  have  said 
and  done  all  they  can,  you'll  always  come  back  to  this: 
some  people  must  work  for  money  and  get  little  of  it,  and 
some  will  make  money  work  for  them  and  get  a  lot  of  it. 
Now  you've  got  a  big  start;  that's  what  most  people  never 
have;  poor  fellows  with  big  muscles  and  small  brains  and  a 
bad  start.  They  haven't  much  chance,  God  help  'em! 
But  you  have  had  a  bit  of  luck.  You  ought  to  take  thought 
of  the  future.  That's  why  I  speak.  I  doubt  if  you've  even 
laid  aside  your  income  tax.  Have  you?" 

"No,  sir.  I  never  have  had  any  call  to  worry  about 
taxes.  They  tell  me  Uncle  Sam  is  likely  to  jump  me  for 
right  smart  of  my  cash;  I  been  thinking  of  figuring  it  out, 
but  I — well,  I  been  too  busy  looking  for  a  good  time." 

"You'd  better  not  delay  too  long.  The  government  is 
very  exacting  and  you  can't  escape.  It  might  be  rather 
embarrassing  to  find  that  you  had  spent  that  tax.  I  could 
give  you  a  fair  idea  of  the  amount  if  you  care  to  take  me  into 
your  confidence." 

Larrick  welcomed  his  good  offices  with  something  of  the 
dour  gratitude  one  feels  toward  a  famous  surgeon. 

"They  gave  me  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars 
for  my  claim  it  didn't  cost  me  anything  to  find.  It  hopped 
out  and  bit  at  me.  And  I  didn't  have  much  expense  working 
it.  I  brought  most  of  my  cash  to  New  York  in  a  draft  and 
it's  deposited  in  a  bank  downtown." 

Mr.  Frewin  got  a  paper  and  a  pencil  and  wrote  out  the 
answers  Larrick  gave  to  his  questions.  He  compiled  every 
item  that  could  be  charged  as  a  legitimate  deduction, 
realizing  that  these  deductions  would  have  to  be  submitted 
to  internal-revenue  collectors  with  the  eyes  of  lynxes  and 
their  tender  mercies. 

Then  he  made  a  few  computations  and  sighed : 

"I'm  afraid,  my  boy,  that  you  will  have  to  pay  an  income 
tax  of  not  less  than — perhaps  more  than — a  hundred  thousand 
dollars." 

"My  God!" 

"Quite  so!" 

"Why,  that's  nearly  half  of  my  whole  pile!" 


250  BEAUTY 

"Yes,  and  if  you'd  got  more  for  your  mine  your  tax  would 
have  been  far  greater.  The  rate  mounts  by  leaps  and 
bounds.  Last  year  I  made  a  little  side  deal  in  a  stock  that 
cleaned  me  a  million  dollars.  It  cost  me  next  to  nothing 
and  I  had  to  pay  nine  hundred  thousand  dollars  of  that  to 
the  government  as  a  tax." 

Larrick  was  stunned.     He  mumbled : 

"I've  always  been  some  patriotic,  but  I  reckon  I'll  just 
light  out  for  Europe  and  go  to  Monte  Carlo  where  I  got  a 
gamblin'  chance  with  my  money." 

Frewin  smiled  sadly.  "But  you  can't  sail.  You  can't 
get  a  passport  till  you  show  a  receipt  for  your  income  tax. 
You  see,  we  had  a  little  war  back  in  nineteen  seventeen  and 
nineteen  eighteen.  That's  two  years  ago,  but  the  Senate 
and  the  President  couldn't  get  together  over  the  treaty, 
so  we're  still  at  war  with  Germany.  We  were  the  last  to  go  in 
and  we're  the  only  ones  that  can't  get  out.  There's  the 
piper  to  pay — and  the  devil.  If  your  money  hadn't  come 
so  easily  you  could  claim  a  lot  of  exemptions  and  depre- 
ciations. But  good  luck  is  bad  nowadays.  You'd  better 
let  me  send  you  to  my  tax  expert  and  find  out  just  how  much 
you'll  be  mulcted.  Then  you'd  better  set  that  amount 
aside  in  a  special  fund  at  a  good  rate  of  interest.  As  for  the 
remainder,  I  wish  you'd  lend  it  to  me." 

This  was  still  more  startling.  His  millionaire  host  wanted 
to  borrow  what  the  vampire  government  left!  Frewin 
explained: 

"When  Mr.  Carnegie  died  it  was  found  that  he  owed 
several  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  the  widows  of  friends. 
He  had  taken  their  money,  given  his  note  for  it,  and  invested 
it  so  that  their  incomes  were  far  greater  than  they  could  ever 
have  made  for  themselves.  I'm  doing  a  bit  of  that  myself 
for  orphans  and  widows  of  men  I  have  loved. 

"I'd  like  to  do  the  same  for  you.  It's  about  the  only 
way  I  can  see  to  pay  you  anything  on  account.  I'll  guarantee 
you  against  loss  and  give  you  everything  I  can  make  for 
you." 

Larrick  understood  and  was  deeply  touched.  "That's 
mighty  white  of  you,  sir.  But  it's  not  fair." 


CLELIA  251 

Frewin  laughed.     "You're  afraid  of  my  security?" 

"Oh  no,  but  I  couldn't  allow  you  to  take  all  that  risk. 
You'd  gamble  and  guarantee  both." 

"It  would  be  a  comfort  to  me." 

Larrick  had  never  been  in  such  a  quandary  of  exquisite 
subtleties.  If  he  handed  his  dwindling  fortune  over  to  this 
plutocrat  he  would  be  like  a  child  on  an  allowance  and  he 
would  also  be  playing  the  part  of  a  bad  sport  in  accepting 
a  guaranty  against  loss  while  enjoying  the  profits  of  a  great 
financier's  genius  If  he  refused,  he  would  seem  to  distrust 
a  venerable  friend  and  would  deny  him  a  petition. 

Before  he  could  find  a  way  out,  Mr.  Frewin  had  risen, 
squeezed  his  shoulder,  and  said: 

"Think  it  over,  my  boy.  It's  your  money.  Don't  let 
me  take  it  away  from  you  if  you  want  to  keep  it,  but  see 
that  you  keep  it.  Good  night!"  And  he  was  gone  up  to 
bed. 

Larrick,  feeling  lonelier  than  ever  he  had  felt  in  the  desert 
solitudes,  went  up  to  his  own  room.  He  was  lost  in  a 
wilderness  of  perplexities,  financial  now  as  well  as  amorous. 
Nancy's  letter  lay  on  his  dressing  table  like  a  mortgage  on 
his  soul,  and  on  the  window  panes  the  moon  beat  with  silver 
fingers,  reminding  him  of  Clelia,  who  had  come  to  him  like  a 
mystic  spouse  born  of  lunar  glow. 

He  loved  her  so  well  that  it  seemed  as  if  his  flirtation  with 
Nancy  were  rather  a  perfidy  in  advance  against  Clelia  than 
his  infatuation  for  Clelia  an  injustice  to  Nancy. 

17 


CHAPTER  X 

A?TER  a  night  of  pitching  and  tossing  in  and  out  of 
fitful  slumbers  Larrick  slept  till  ten.  When  he  went 
down  to  his  breakfast  Mr.  Frewin  had  long  since  gone  to 
town  and  Mrs.  Frewin  was  deep  in  her  garden  tasks. 

In  the  hope  of  walking  off  his  troubles,  he  set  out  for  a 
stroll.  Two  or  three  dogs  hailed  the  idea  as  an  excellent 
one,  and  diverted  his  mind  from  his  own  thoughts  by  their 
wild  behavior,  their  foot  races,  sham  battles,  real  quarrels, 
their  demands  that  he  throw  sticks  for  them  to  fetch,  their 
burrowings  for  moles,  their  tree-climbing  efforts  after  chip- 
munks and  squirrels.  They  could  not  understand  his  calm 
or  his  absorption  in  pursuits  as  frantic  and  perhaps  as  foolish. 

He  found  himself  at  length  near  an  ancient  ivied  stone 
wall  under  an  oak  of  enormous  bole  and  canopy.  As  he 
paused  a  moment  in  the  patterned  shadow  he  heard  the 
muffled  gallopade  of  a  horse  along  the  soft  old  lane  outside. 

He  was  too  deep  in  his  vagaries  to  turn  and  see  who  came 
on  so  furiously.  Suddenly  there  was  a  shortening  of  the 
hoof  rhythm,  the  great  grunt  of  a  horse  launching  itself  into 
space  at  the  sharp,  glad  cry  of  a  girl,  a  crash  of  branches,  and 
a  resounding  thump. 

Larrick  threw  himself  back  in  amazement  as  a  big  thor- 
oughbred plunged  to  earth  almost  on  his  toes,  stumbled, 
recovered,  and  trotted  away  a  little  and  halted  with  bridle 
dangling  and  saddle  empty. 

Larrick  stared  and  wondered  if  he  were  bewitched.  Then 
he  heard  a  laugh  of  mingled  pain,  shame,  and  self-ridicule 
from  overhead  somewhere.  He  whirled  and  stood  aghast. 

He  had  seen  a  lynching  or  two  in  his  time,  and  now  he 
beheld  the  legs  and  body  of  a  young  man  pendent  and 
kicking  from  the  boughs  above  him. 

He  ran  forward  a  few  steps  and  saw  that  the  young  man 


CLELIA  253 

was  a  young  woman.  It  was  Clelia  Blakeney  in  riding  clothes. 
She  was  shaken  witfy  laughter,  but  the  tears  were  streaming 
out  of  her  eyes  from  the  anguish  of  her  hair. 

She  was  caught  like  Absolom,  but  there  was  no  murder  in 
the  heart  of  her  discoverer. 

Larrick  was  stunned  dumb  by  the  sight  and  the  plight  of 
her.  But  she  shrilled:  "Yes,  it's  me.  How  long  are  you 
going  to  stand  there  staring?  Get  me  down  from  here,  can't 
you?" 

He  stepped  forward  and  caught  her  by  the  ankles  to  pluck 
her  away,  but  she  yowled  with  torment  and  kicked  at  him. 

"Are  you  trying  to  scalp  me?  Climb  the  tree,  or  do 
something,  quick." 

A  tardy  inspiration  came  to  him  at  length,  and,  taking 
her  by  the  ankles  again,  he  placed  her  feet  on  his  shoulders 
and  put  his  arms  up  along  her  flanks  to  steady  her  while  she 
raised  her  hands  and  with  much  difficulty  disentangled  the 
long  braids  of  her  hair  from  the  stout  limb  that  had  scooped 
them  as  her  horse  rose  to  the  wall. 

Larrick  felt  a  shamefast  thrill  at  the  feel  of  the  fine  steel 
muscles  of  her  thighs  as  he  upheld  her.  But  only  for  a 
moment.  When  her  hair  was  released  there  was  some 
difficulty  about  getting  her  to  earth. 

When  finally  she  had  sliddered  down  him  and  reached  the 
ground  he  waited  like  a  yokel  while  she  got  several  bits  of 
bark  out  of  her  hair  and  a  few  little  damns  out  of  her  temper. 

Then  she  began  to  laugh  at  herself.  Her  horse  came  back 
and  she  leaned  against  him,  shouting  while  he  whinnied,  and 
nudged  her  with  his  muzzle,  and  threatened  the  leaping  dogs 
with  his  heels. 

She  explained  the  miracle  of  her  apparition  simply : 

"I  saw  you  mooning  along  as  I  came  up  and  I  thought 
I'd  give  you  a  surprise.  I  bent  over  to  duck  under  that 
infernal  bough,  but  my  fool  hair  had  to  fly  up  and  catch 
and  rake  me  out  of  the  saddle.  Lucky  thing  my  hair  stayed 
on.  I'm  too  young  to  be  bald.  Lucky  my  feet  came  out 
of  the  stirrups  or  I'd  have  broken  my  fool  neck.  Well, 
aren't  you  glad  to  see  me?" 

"Tickled  'most  to  death." 


254  BEAUTY 

11 1  came  over  for  a  swim.  So  go  get  your  bathing  suit  on. 
The  Squair  girls  say  you  are  a  regular  goldfish.  You  see, 
the  swimming  pool  on  our  place  vanished  the  other  day. 
The  concrete  cracked  and  we  haven't  been  able  to  get  it 
fixed  yet.  I  happened  to  meet  Cathy  Squair  out  riding  and 
she  said  Norry  was  in  town,  so  I  thought  I'd  take  a  chance. 
I  rode  back  home  for  my  suit,  and  here  we  are." 

She  pointed  to  a  little  roll  fastened  to  the  saddle  hooks. 
Larrick  blushed  at  the  scantiness  of  the  trifle  so  ruddily  that 
Clelia  frowned. 

"Of  course,  if  you're  going  to  be  shocked,  you're  excused." 

"I  reckon  you'd  have  a  hard  time  shockin'  me,"  said 
Larrick,  with  chivalry  of  the  latest  school. 

They  turned  and  walked  to  the  house  along  the  pathway, 
Clelia  leading  the  horse,  the  dogs  ranging  wildly,  and 
Larrick's  heart  stumbling  in  his  breast  in  a  stupid  bliss. 

Clelia  fastened  the  horse  to  a  tree  near  the  pool,  where 
the  Squair  girls  were  already  floundering,  and  ran  with  her 
suit  to  a  dressing  room. 

Larrick  went  to  another,  and  when  he  was  ready  to  come 
out  he  saw  that  Clelia  had  beaten  him  to  the  water.  She 
was  kicking  up  a  shower  of  spray  and  crying  out  in  a  rhapsody 
of  energy.  Her  abundant  hair  was  tucked  under  a  red  cap, 
and  her  blue  jersey  was  vague  in  the  waves  she  made. 

But  when  she  emerged  and  ran  like  a  cat  up  the  side  of  the 
bathhouse  to  the  roof  he  saw  her  so  completely  that  he 
flinched. 

Her  nimbleness  amazed  him.  When  she  reached  the  ridge 
she  drew  herself  up  to  her  full  height  and  stood  a  moment  in 
tinted  statuary,  a  little  Venus  atop  her  tiny  temple.  Then 
with  a  reckless  grace  that  terrified  him  she  launched  straight 
out  into  the  air  as  she  would  fly,  her  arms  dispread  wingwise, 
her  head  flung  back  like  the  red  crest  of  a  bird,  her  body 
curved  deeply  at  the  waist,  her  hips  and  legs  drawn  back  in 
a  wonder  of  grace.  They  called  it  the  swan  dive. 

Far  out  she  sailed,  then  turned,  flung  her  head  down, 
brought  her  palms  together,  and  shot  into  the  pool  with  a 
harpoon  slash.  Her  length  followed  as  if  slowly,  until  she 
was  all  engulfed.  The  little  crater  she  had  raised  in  the 


CLELIA  255 

water  was  level  again  before  she  reappeared  far  away  in  a 
long,  slow  arc  to  her  waist.  Then  slipping  back  again,  she 
swam  with  all  speed,  making  for  the  wall  with  swift  over- 
hand strokes.  When  she  had  gained  it  she  sprang  to  the 
ledge  and  was  sitting  there,  smiling  demurely  and  panting 
with  shy  triumph,  almost  before  Larrick  had  recovered  from 
the  first  fright  of  her  adventure. 

So  cool  and  wet  and  elate  and  immature  she  was  that 
her  almost  nakedness  gave  him  none  of  the  sweet  shame  of 
desire.  She  was  not  siren  or  woman,  like  the  voluptuous 
Clarice  Squair  who  homed  in  the  water  with  a  lotus  languor. 
Clelia  was  simply  youth  without  sex;  she  was  the  spirit  of 
velocity,  the  index  of  all  postures,  perfection  to  a  beatitude. 

As  she  rested,  her  eyes  were  not  observing  the  observation 
of  Larrick  or  estimating  the  influence  of  her  charms.  She 
was  vexed  because  her  gifts  were  denied  the  career  they 
merited. 

"I'm  simply  furious,"  she  complained,  "at  dad  because 
he  wouldn't  let  me  go  to  the  Olympic  games  at  Antwerp  this 
year.  A  whole  pack  of  girls  went  over.  Ethelda  Bleibtrey 
and  Helen  Wainwright,  Irene  Guest,  and  even  little  Aileen 
Riggen.  She  is  only  thirteen  years  old  and  weighs  only 
eighty-five  pounds,  but  she  won  the  first  prize  in  high  diving 
and  the  King  of  Belgium  pinned  the  championship  medal 
on  her  little  chest  and  Mayor  Hylan  is  going  to  pin  another 
one  on. 

"I  can  do  all  those  stunts — the  jackknife  dives  and  the 
twists  and  even  the  two-and-a-half  backward  somersault. 
But  would  dad  let  me  go?  Not  for  a  minute!  And  mother 
said  she'd  have  my  sanity  looked  into  if  I  suggested  it  again." 

Clelia's  mdther  and  father  were  simply  clinging  to  the 
last  tatters  of  old  conventionalities  in  forbidding  their  young 
daughter  to  take  part  in  such  a  conspicuous  affair.  They 
had  not  objected  to  her  appearing  in  tights  as  Puck  before 
several  hundred  spectators  in  a  public  performance  at  a 
private  home.  They  were  not  quite  ready  to  have  her  cross 
the  ocean  and  compete,  almost  completely  nude,  before  the 
mob.  And  this  struck  Clelia  as  unreasonable. 

In  the  long,  slow  history  of  the  emancipation  of  women 


256  BEAUTY 

1920  marks  the  crest  where  women  were  granted  the  vote 
for  all  American  offices.  But  perhaps  there  was  an  even 
more  profound  revolution  indicated  by  the  fact  that  the 
United  States  sent  overseas  to  the  Olympic  games  a  team 
of  eighty  mighty  athletes  and  included  a  group  of  young 
women  with  a  chaperon,  and  that,  on  their  return,  they 
marched  on  Fifth  Avenue  and  were  decorated  by  the  Mayor 
of  New  York.  There  was  something  more  than  Athenian 
in  it  all,  and  it  was  certainly  far  from  the  ways  of  the  days 
of  the  Puritans. 

Larrick  was  almost  as  much  astonished  as  Miles  Standish 
would  have  been  if  he  could  have  been  revived  for  the 
occasion. 

That  this  daughter  of  the  American  peerage  should  grieve 
at  being  kept  at  home  from  such  an  experience — well,  it 
proved  at  least  that  morals  do  move  and  that  there  is  no 
keeping  up  with  discontent. 

In  the  struggle  for  happiness  there  is  something  of  the 
gymnast's  quenchless  unrest.  Every  record  he  breaks  serves 
merely  as  a  new  beginning  for  a  new  ambition. 

Clelia,  with  perhaps  a  little  eagerness  to  show  off,  gave 
demonstrations  of  her  amazing  agilities.  From  the  spring- 
board and  from  various  heights  she  made  a  dozen  kinds  of 
dive,  calling  their  names,  like  an  Annette  Kellerman  in 
vaudeville,  the  back  jackknife  somersault,  the  half-gainer 
standing,  the  full-gainer  standing,  the  Oslander  with  the 
take-off  on  one  foot,  the  one-and-a-half  somersault  forward 
running — a  whole  catalogue  of  an  art  with  a  technic  and  a 
terminology  of  its  own. 

She  was  interested  like  any  other  artist  in  the  finesse  of 
her  performance.  Only  another  craftsman  of  her  guild 
could  understand  her  high  achievements.  As  there  are 
poet's  poets  and  painter's  painters,  Clelia  was  a  diver's 
diver. 

Her  lingo  and  her  accomplishments  were  a  foreign  lan- 
guage to  Larrick.  But  she  stirred  him  as  a  singer  of  an 
Italian  aria  might;  the  words  nothing  and  the  music  not 
needing  them.  The  intricate  fleetness  of  her  cadenzas  gave 
him  joy  beyond  comprehension  and  almost  beyond  endur- 


.   CLELIA  257 

ance.  The  beauty  of  posture  and  of  lithe  transition,  the  wild 
glory  of  having  a  body  of  such  genius,  and  of  improvising 
poems  of  such  indescribable  ecstasy  filled  him  with  a  kind 
of  religious  awe.  It  seemed  a  cruelty  that  no  moving 
camera,  no  fleet-brushed  painter,  no  quick-fingered  sculptor 
was  there  to  make  a  throng  of  images  of  this  divinity  ex- 
ercising her  ambrosial  limbs  in  a  revelry,  a  tumult  of  super- 
human symmetries. 

He  longed  for  a  hundred  statuettes  of  her  or  a  hundred 
cameos  of  her  as  she  carved  herself  against  the  blue  field  of 
the  sky,  against  the  fluent  lapis  lazuli  of  the  water  leaping 
to  embrace  her. 

Larrick's  heart  cried  out  in  his  breast  for  Heaven  to  send 
him  the  skill  of  a  recording  artist.  He  had  never  wanted  to 
be  an  artist  before,  had  hardly  realized  what  art  means, 
what  precious  things  it  redeems  from  the  inconceivable 
floods  of  beauty  pouring  like  a  glittering  Niagara  past  the 
eyes  of  man,  making  a  thunder  and  a  terror  of  the  very 
multitude  of  crystals  and  laces  and  mists  that  flee  too  fast 
even  to  be  beheld. 

The  pity  of  beauty  and  its  laughing  rush  from  oblivion  to 
oblivion  broke  him  like  a  tragedy.  Here  was  but  one 
young  girl,  and  there  were  millions  of  young  girls  alive, 
and  trillions  dead  and  gone  unseen,  unsung,  unpictured. 
And  this  one  girl  was  material  for  galleries  of  art  and 
libraries  of  poetry  and  prose.  Yet  she  was  supposed  to  be 
born  for  the  comfort  of  one  man  and  for  the  making  of 
more  young  girls  to  overwhelm  and  disconcert  all  the  arts 
that  mankind  has  devised  for  its  own  torment. 

Larrick's  own  thoughts  were  hardly  more  articulate  or 
intelligent  in  their  turmoil  than  the  surface  of  the  pool 
that  Clelia  kept  in  a  perplexity  of  eddies  and  swirls,  bubbles 
and  foam  and  little  tidal  waves  from  the  bombardment  of 
the  incessant  flaming,  twisted,  tiny  thunderbolts  her  ca- 
pricious soul  made  of  her  responsive  flesh. 

Clelia  had  worn  herself  almost  out  in  her  transports. 
Larrick,  exhausted  with  wonder,  begged  her  to  spare  herself, 
but  she  must  take  one  more  plunge  from  the  hot  noon  air 
to  the  night  chill  of  the  water  before  she  transformed 


258  BEAUTY 

herself  from  a  sleek  white  dolphin  to  a  respectable  young 
lady  jailed  in  clothes  and  good  manners. 

She  scaled  the  wall  of  the  bathhouse  and  took  her  post 
against  the  sky,  the  sun  upon  her  so  glaring  that  she  seemed 
to  be  enaureoled  in  radiance.  As  she  leaped  she  tried  to 
check  herself. 

From  her  height  she  had  seen  Norry  Frewin  coming 
forward  on  the  run.  His  presence  startled  her;  the  enam- 
ored admiration  in  his  eyes  offended  her. 

She  fought  against  the  air  in  vain,  turning  awkwardly, 
and  came  hurtling  down  like  a  broken-winged  cygnet, 
striking  the  water  in  a  heap. 

She  was  bruised  and  stung,  but  she  was  angered  more. 

For  the  first  time  she  felt  unclothed,  and  she  would 
not  leave  the  concealment  of  the  water  till  the  humiliated 
Norry  had  gone  away  in  obedience  to  her  commands. 

She  had  fallen  from  divinity  to  humanity  with  a  crash. 
And  Larrick  was  brought  down  with  her.  He  was  no 
longer  a  shepherd  on  Mount  Ida  choosing  among  goddesses. 
He  was  a  false  friend  making  eyes  at  another  fellow's 
sweetheart. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  party  broke  up  and  Larrick  and  the  rest  slunk  back 
into  their  everyday  raiment  as  the  banished  Norry  slunk 
back  to  the  house. 

Clelia  came  out  in  her  riding  clothes.  They  had  seemed 
very  daring  before;  now  they  were  cumbrous ;  a  high  stock, 
a  coat  with  long  tails,  flaring  breeches  pinched  at  the  knee, 
and  spurred  boots  hiding  her  little  feet. 

She  was  furious  at  herself  for  being  caught  sneaking  over 
to  steal  a  swim  in  Norry  Frewin's  pool.  She  was  quite  the 
petulant  young  girl,  a  nymph  no  more,  Cinderella  with  the 
coach  in  broken  pumpkin  shards. 

Larrick  followed  her  to  where  her  horse  was  tied.  She 
was  still  fuming  when  she  set  her  heel  in  Larrick's  palm  and 
let  him  hoist  her  to  the  saddle. 

But  the  height  seemed  to  restore  her  to  graciousness. 
Like  a  queen,  she  was  ill  at  ease  and  haughty  except  aloft. 

She  apologized  at  once  for  her  temper. 

"I'm  horribly  ashamed  of  myself.  You  can  tell  Norry 
so — if  it's  any  comfort  to  him.  Will  you  forgive  me? 
Please!  I  won't  bother  you  again  for  a  while.  I'm  going  to 
the  mountains  day  after  to-morrow  for  two  or  three  months. 
I  do  hope  I'll  see  you  again  when  I  get  back.  Good-by!" 

The  horse  sprang  forward  and  she  departed  in  a  flutter  of 
braids  and  coat  tails  and  a  drum  ruffle  of  hoofs. 

Her  last  words  struck  Larrick  backward  as  if  the  horse 
had  kicked  him  in  the  breast. 

Clelia  was  going! — was  gone!  for  months!  forever!  She 
had  been  as  casual  about  it  as  if  she  were  running  upstairs 
to  dress  for  dinner.  The  adoration  he  had  poured  upon 
her  from  his  eyes  like  an  ointment  of  worship,  a  sacrificial 
spikenard,  had  meant  nothing  to  her. 

She  had  poised  before  him  as  a  humming  bird  might  stay 


26o  BEAUTY 

its  iridescence  a  quivering  moment  before  an  ungainly 
hollyhock,  stabbing  its  needle  beak  into  its  heart,  and  then 
flashing  away  without  a  thought  of  regret. 

He  was  only  one  among  the  mobs  who  stared  at  her,  loved 
her,  and  wanted  her.  The  humming  bird  was  bored  with 
too  many  flowers.  There  were  always  flowers  waiting  to  be 
pierced  and  forsaken.  Humming  birds  never  seem  to  rest 
or  to  sleep.  Stories  are  told  of  their  nests,  but  they  are 
probably  false.  It  is  the  nature  of  the  humming  bird  to  be 
always  elsewhere  or  on  the  way  there.  Clelia  had  the  soul 
of  a  humming  bird.  — ' 

Before  Larrick  had  regained  his  balance  Clelia  on  the  big 
horse  was  a  child  on  a  pony,  a  moth,  a  nothing.  She  had  not 
even  told  him  where  she  had  gone.  He  must  find  out. 
He  must  follow  her,  make  her  love  him,  or  take  her  anyway. 
The  mountains  would  be  a  good  place  for  such  a  captive. 


CHAPTER  XII 

T  ARRICK  was  so  doleful  over  the  loss  of  Clelia  that  he 
I-/  felt  neither  remorse  for  his  claims  upon  Norry's  beloved 
nor  interest  in  Norry's  own  problems. 

And  he  found  Norry  in  such  a  state  of  excitement  that 
he  paid  no  heed  to  Larrick's  mood.  He  went  to  Larrick's 
room,  closed  the  door,  and  spoke  hurriedly. 

"Pack  up  your  things,  old  man;  we're  going  on  a  long 
journey.  It  was  a  rotten  trick  to  leave  you  in  the  lurch 
without  warning,  but  I  see  you  weren't  entirely  neglected, 
with  Clelia  pulling  off  stunts  and  clothes  and  everything  for 
your  special  entertainment.  The  little  fiend!  Did  you 
hear  her  light  into  me?  But  there's  a  surprise  in  store  for 
her. 

"If  you  don't  mind  I  won't  tell  you  the  whole  story  of  my 
recent  life  just  now.  I  hope  you  won't  read  it  in  the  papers. 
It's  nothing  to  boast  of,  and  I've  been  a  damneder  fool 
than  usual.  The  main  thing  is  I'm  going  to  disappear  for  a 
while — for  the  benefit  of  my  health.  If  you'll  disappear 
with  me  I'll  promise  you  a  good  time. 

"While  I  was  in  town  I  learned  from  Burnley — the  big 
painter — that  he's  going  up  to  Mrs.  Roantree's  camp  in  the 
Adirondacks  right  away.  You  remember  Mrs.  Roantree? 
Clelia  is  going,  too,  and  a  big  crowd. 

"I  was  to  have  been  invited,  but  Clelia  cut  my  name  off 
the  list,  the  little  beast!  An  uncle  of  mine,  though,  has  a 
camp  up  there  right  near  the  Roantree  place.  He  isn't 
there,  but  I'm  always  welcome.  So  we'll  go  in  my  car.  It's 
a  bully  ride,  and  it  will  be  a  little  less  conspicuous  for  me 
than  going  by  train.  And  it  will  show  you  a  bit  of  life  that's 
different  from  anything  else  you've  seen. 

"Do  you  mind?  If  you  don't  want  to  go,  say  so.  If 
you  think  you  can  stand  it,  I'll  promise  you  hunting,  fishing, 


262  BEAUTY 

boating,  swimming,  dancing,  and  plenty  of  handsome  women. 
You  may  meet  your  fate  up  there.  How  about  it?" 

Had  he  been  in  less  imperious  haste  he  might  have  seen 
that  Larrick  was  smothering  his  eagerness.  Larrick  felt 
that  he  had  never  been  quite  so  ugly  a  hypocrite  as  when  he 
mumbled  that  he  would  be  right  glad  to  go  if  Norry  was  sure 
he  wanted  him  along.  Norry  was  unfeignedly  delighted. 
He  ran  on: 

"Clelia  will  be  mad  as  a  wet  hen  when  she  sees  me,  but 
if  I  can  get  her  alone  in  the  Adirondacks  where  she  can't 
escape  I  may  be  able  to  make  her  listen  to  reason.  So, 
you  see,  all  things  work  together  for  those  that  love  the 
Lord." 

"Now  and  then  the  devil  and  his  children  have  their 
run  of  luck,  too,"  said  Larrick,  thinking  of  the  unmerited 
answer  to  his  own  unspoken  prayers. 

Norry  took  this  to  mean  that  Larrick  was  calling  him  a 
devil.  There  is  always  a  bit  of  flattery  in  this  term.  And 
few  men  would  be  pleased  to  be  considered  devoid  of  deviltry. 
But  Norry  was  a  sick  devil;  he  was  going  to  be  a  saint.  He 
shook  his  head. 

"I've  been  in  hell  all  right  for  the  last  day  or  two  and 
I'm  tired  of  brimstone.  From  now  on,  if  I  get  out  of  this 
scrape,  I  run  straight. 

"Throw  your  things  in  your  suit  cases.  You'll  need  eve- 
ning clothes  and  everything.  We'll  get  off  as  soon  after 
lunch  as  possible.  Now  I've  got  to  go  and  tell  poor  mother 
a  pack  of  pretty  lies  about  wanting  to  get  away  from  people 
and  back  to  nature  and  a  lot  of  rot." 

How  much  of  his  story  his  mother  believed  it  would  be 
hard  to  tell.  Parents  usually  learn  that  it  does  not  pay 
to  investigate  everything.  The  society  lie  is  no  more 
necessary  a  convenience  than  the  family  lie  and  the  pretense 
of  credulity. 

At  about  three  o'clock  Norry  threw  in  the  clutch  of  his 
racing  car  and  set  off  with  a  load  of  baggage  in  the  back. 
Larrick  was  so  encouraged  by  the  prospect  of  a  renewed 
communion  with  Clelia,  and  so  convinced  of  the  hopelessness 
of  Norry's  courtship,  that  he  gave  himself  up  to  the  heavenly 


CLELIA  263 

privilege  of  that  chariot  de  luxe.  He  banqueted  upon  land- 
scape. In  the  long,  long  flight  of  nearly  four  hundred  miles 
there  was  no  repetition  of  vista,  no  monotony  of  contour  or 
hue. 

The  roads  had  suffered  a  little  from  the  neglect  enforced 
by  the  war,  but  to  Larrick  they  were  black  marble  in  their 
solid  smoothness. 

First,  Norry  struck  through  the  Croton  chain  of  lakes 
that  New  York  City  built  out  of  brooks  and  little  rivers  for 
the  quenching  of  its  gigantic  thirst.  Though  many  a  home 
and  farmstead  and  even  many  a  village  had  been  razed  and 
submerged,  the  sheets  of  beauty  seemed  now  to  have  been 
established  there  by  the  craft  of  time,  and  the  huge  forti- 
fications of  the  dams  with  their  broad  roadways  across 
and  their  glittering  cascades  in  the  spillways  seemed  but  to 
ratify  the  will  of  God,  the  Landscape  Gardener. 

Norry  Frewin  told  how  his  grandfather  had  been  one  of  the 
great  neglected  geniuses  who  foresaw  the  need  of  these 
reservoirs  and  helped  to  guarantee  their  titanic  gracefulness. 
He  felt  a  sorrow  at  the  injustice  which  gives  immortality  to 
the  petty  twister  of  a  sonnet  or  a  half -hour  story  or  a  novel 
to  read  oneself  to  sleep  with,  and  denies  it  to  the  poets  who 
build  these  epics  of  engineering,  these  infinite  solaces  for 
humanity,  fetching  cups  of  water  to  the  lips  of  billions  and 
establishing  ceaseless  fountains  in  every  tenement. 

Even  Larrick,  with  his  little  taste  for  scenery,  exclaimed 
at  the  charm  of  the  linked  waters,  the  sinuous  restlessness 
of  the  ever-curving  road  hurrying  from  idyll  to  idyll.  He 
felt  the  magnificent  poetry  Norry's  grandfather  had  written 
with  lakes  and  hills. 

Over  steep  and  into  valley,  round  knob  and  betwixt 
meadows,  through  covert  and  village,  past  old  church  and 
old  tavern,  school  and  mansion,  they  sped.  When  they 
reached  the  heights  of  Peekskill  they  beheld  the  vast  level 
of  the  Hudson,  a  gleaming  highway  among  mountains 
aligned.  The  car  dropped  down  the  steep  streets  of  the 
city  and  ran  out  of  it  again  along  the  Albany  Post  Road,  now 
inclosed  in  cleft  mountains,  now  darting  back  eagerly  for  a 
glimpse  of  the  river.  There  was  such  grace  in  the  curves 


264  BEAUTY 

up  and  down  and  in  and  out  that  the  road  itself  seemed  to 
rejoice  and  meander  like  a  dawdling  stream. 

By  and  by  Larrick's  unschooled  appetite  for  natural 
beauty  was  sated  and  he  took  heed  of  Norry's  almost  heed- 
less velocity.  His  heart  seemed  to  swing  over  to  his  right 
ribs  as  the  car  swirled  around  the  sharp  shin  of  a  hill  or 
evaded  another  wild  racer  by  the  width  of  an  eyelash. 
Norry  seemed  to  fear  nothing  except  a  rural  constable  in 
disguise  or  in  ambush.  But  Larrick  feared  death. 

He  was  at  home  on  a  man-eating,  bone-breaking  broncho 
that  would  have  frightened  Norry  out  of  his  wits,  but 
Norry  alone  laughed  at  these  escapes  from  disaster  where 
the  slip  of  a  tire  or  the  delayed  inspiration  of  another  driver 
meant  a  crash  and  hideous  torment  in  an  overturned  and 
blazing  machine 

Larrick  suggested  caution;  urged  it;  pleaded  for  it;  and 
finally,  in  all  the  panic  of  a  man  whose  courage  is  being 
riddled  by  unfamiliar  tests,  demanded  it. 

He  had  read  this  very  morning  that  the  deaths  from 
automobile  accidents  in  the  United  States  had  now  reached 
the  rate  of  one  every  thirty-one  minutes,  three  times  as  many 
as  from  all  the  accidents  from  railroads,  boats,  and  every 
dangerous  industry.  He  protested  to  Norry: 

"There's  a  sucker  born  every  minute  and  a  sucker  'kills 
somebody  every  half  hour.  This  looks  so  much  like  my 
half  hour  I  wish  you'd  either  slow  down  or  let  me  out." 

Norry  flung  a  glance  of  disdainful  amusement  at  Larrick's 
ashen  features  and  laughed: 

"And  I  thought  you  were  a  brave  man!" 

"You  never  heard  me  say  so,"  Larrick  growled.  "Any- 
way, I'm  scared  stiff  now,  and  I'd  be  much  obliged  if  you'd — " 

Norry  chuckled,  "You'll  get  used  to  it,"  and  stepped  on 
the  accelerator.  Speed  was  voluptuous  to  him  and  he  tasted 
the  seraphic  pride  of  riding  a  comet.  Larrick  was  growing 
speed-sick 

He  had  no  pistol  with  him,  but  he  carried  a  large  jack- 
knife  and  he  took  it  out,  opened  it,  and  set  the  point  in 
Norry's  ribs.  He  shouted  above  the  roar  of  the  unmuffled 
engine: 


CLELIA  265 

"Boy,  you're  goin'  to  slow  up  or  you're  goin'  to  die." 

Norry  stared  at  him,  unbelieving,  but  there  was  despera- 
tion in  the  gaze  that  met  his.  He  slowed  up. 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said,  with  honest  regret.  "I  didn't 
realize  that  you  were  really  worried." 

"My  object  in  comin'  along  was  to  get  where  we  were 
goin',"  Larrick  mumbled.  "I  know  six  mo'  useful  ways  of 
dyin'  than  bein'  smeared  all  over  this  nice  road.  If  you 
want  to  commit  suicide,  you  just  drop  me  at  the  nearest 
depot  and  go  your  way." 

"I'll  be  good,"  said  Norry.  And  thereafter  he  ran  at 
what  he  considered  a  funeral  pace,  averaging  only  thirty 
miles  an  hour. 

When  they  reached  Albany  the  sunset  was  aflare  in  all 
the  sky  and  they  stopped  for  dinner  at  the  Ten  Eyck  Hotel. 
Afterward  they  exercised  their  legs  a  little  and  climbed  to 
take  a  glimpse  of  the  state  Capitol  set  like  a  hill  upon  a  hill. 

Then  they  set  forth  again  for  a  dash  across  the  forty  miles 
to  Saratoga,  following  the  leaping  searchlight  through  the 
night-laden  roads  that  had  once  been  thronged  with  Southern 
aristocracy  bringing  their  race  horses  and  their  slaves  along 
to  the  spa. 

The  olden  splendors  of  Saratoga  were  being  refurbished 
after  a  sleep  of  years,  but  the  racing  season  was  not  on  and 
the  hotels  were  not  thronged. 

After  a  night  in  the  Grand  Union  and  an  early-morning 
visit  to  the  now  well-groomed  springs  where  centuries  ago 
the  ailing  Indians  came  to  drink,  they  rushed  north  again, 
hurdling  the  tumbling  Hudson  on  a  concrete  arc  at  Glens 
Falls  and  entering  the  realm  of  French  and  British  wars  and 
Indian  massacre. 

But  Norry  and  Larrick  were  innocent  of  Colonial  history 
and  fed  up  on  scenery.  The  increasing  grandeur  of  the 
mountains  won  their  decreasing  approval,  for  the  steeps 
held  them  back.  Youth  clamors  for  the  goal ;  age,  glad  for 
its  postponement,  rejoices  in  the  wayside  obstacles. 

Lake  George  did  not  win  a  halt  nor  a  detour  except  for 
gasoline.  They  ran  along  its  border  for  twenty-five  miles 
to  Ticonderoga,  a  name  that  thrills  every  American  school- 


266  BEAUTY 

boy;  but  these  youths  would  not  digress  southward  even 
to  see  the  old  fort  where  Ethan  Allen  surprised  the  British 
commander  in  his  shirt  tail. 

They  pushed  on  till  they  reached  Lake  Champlain, 
skirted  it  to  Westport,  left  it,  and  turned  off  to  Elizabeth- 
town,  where  they  rested  for  luncheon. 

Here  they  were  overtaken  by  the  Sunday  papers  of 
New  York  and  they  spent  half  an  hour  burrowing  among 
them.  In  one  of  the  supplements  Larrick  was  startled  to 
find  a  picture  of  Clelia  as  Puck.  She  sprang  at  him  from 
among  the  portraits  of  crowned  heads,  presidential  candi- 
dates, social  stars,  theatrical  and  movie  beauties,  and  a 
group  of  Polish  women  soldiers  who  had  helped  defeat  the 
Bolsheviki. 

Larrick  noted  that  Norry  was  lost  in  his  own  paper,  and 
he  tore  out  the  portrait  of  Clelia  stealthily.  He  folded  it 
and  cached  it  in  his  pocketbook.  It  gave  him  comfort  like 
a  secret  keepsake  and  warmed  him  to  new  resolve. 

When  he  had  skimmed  the  multifarious  newses  that  in- 
terest the  newspaper  devourer — the  political,  police,  social, 
sporting,  theatrical,  and  other  chronicles — Norry  flung  away 
the  heap  and  returned  to  the  car. 

They  were  in  the  Adirondacks  now  and  everything  was 
mountains,  mountains,  mountains  of  verdure  and  comfort, 
hospitable  mountains  with  lakes  and  trout  streams,  hotels 
and  mansions  and  tents  where  people  pretended  to  be 
roughing  it  in  a  most  polite  ruggedness,  and  air  of  such 
nourishment  that  the  weak  grew  strong  and  the  dying 
revived.  It  was  different  indeed  from  the  melancholy  and 
sterile  churlishness  of  the  mountains  Larrick  had  known 
in  Brewster  County. 

He  breathed  deep  of  balm  and  exaltation,  leaving  Norry 
to  find  his  way  among  the  precipices  and  crags. 

There  was  a  Sabbath  presence  in  the  air  and  he  felt 
vaguely  religious. 

It  was  deep  twilight  in  the  canons  when  Norry  reached 
his  uncle's  lodge  and  found  only  ashes  and  charred  timbers. 
The  camp  had  burned  down  the  day  before. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SOME  heedless  wanderer  had  forgotten  to  put  out  a 
fire  or  had  tossed  a  match  into  a  pile  of  dry  leaves,  and 
left  other  people  to  pay  the  penalty  of  a  wound  in  the 
green  forest  and  a  heap  of  charred  timbers  where  a  home 
had  been. 

A  few  servants,  searching  the  ashes  for  salvage,  recognized 
Norry  and  described  the  appearance  of  the  flames  as  they 
charged  down  a  hill  like  an  army  with  banners.  The  wind 
had  brought  the  fire  forward;  the  lake  had  ended  it.  It 
went  where  fires  go  when  they  go  out.  It  left  dismal  ruin  as 
love  does  when  a  careless  match  starts  it  and  it  burns  itself  up. 

Larrick  was  kindly  enough  to  feel  sorry  even  for  a  rich 
man  who  had  lost  a  treasure.  But  Norry  Frewin  found 
consolation  in  the  adversity  of  his  absent  uncle.  He 
chuckled : 

"Now  Mrs.  Roantree  will  have  to  take  us  in,  and,  once 
we're  in,  she'll  never  put  me  out  till  I've  made  up  with 
Clelia.  Come  on,  or  we'll  be  late  to  dinner." 

Larrick  felt  appallingly  out  of  place  as  a  doubly  uninvited 
guest  of  Mrs.  Roantree,  who  had  impressed  him  as  a  woman 
not  to  be  imposed  upon  easily,  and  dreadful  in  her  capa- 
bilities for  snubbery.  But  Norry  was  not  afraid  of  her. 
He  could  wrap  her  round  his  little  finger.  After  a  short 
dash  through  the  pines  he  turned  into  the  park  that  Larrick 
was  to  know  so  well.  They  drew  up  at  the  door  of  the  Big 
House,  and  when  they  were  shown  into  the  presence  of 
Mrs.  Roantree  Norry  told  a  pitiful  story  in  the  best  manner 
of  a  prince  overtaken  by  bad  fortune  and  oncoming  night. 

Mrs.  Roantree  welcomed  him  royally  and  put  Larrick 
at  his  ease  with  her  hospitality. 

She  explained  that  a  crowd  of  house  guests  would  arrive 
on  the  morrow. 

18 


268  BEAUTY 

Nony  pretended  complete  surprise  on  hearing  that 
Clelia  was  to  be  one  of  them,  and  Mrs.  Roantree  failed  to 
inform  him  that  Clelia  had  refused  to  come  if  he  did. 

She  assigned  Larrick  and  Nony  to  rooms  in  the  Bachelor's 
House,  and  after  dinner  and  a  game  of  cards  they  went 
early  to  bed. 

Larrick  slept  profoundly  in  the  pine-soothed  air,  and  when 
the  dawn  woke  him  he  gazed  from  his  window  across  a  lake 
like  a  sea,  gleaming  blindingly  with  the  level  sun. 

In  the  late  forenoon  a  troop  of  motors  rolled  into  the 
camp;  men  and  women  clambered  out  and  the  lonely 
place  was  now  a  swarming  hive. 

Nony  kept  himself  and  Larrick  in  the  background  till 
Clelia  should  be  settled  and  then  they  strolled  over  to  the 
Big  House  to  welcome  her. 

Nony  was  childishly  amused  at  the  success  of  his  trick. 
Larrick  felt  himself  an  lago  of  duplicity.  But  both  of  them 
were  exultant  with  their  plots  against  Clelia. 

And  both  of  them  were  more  taken  aback  than  she  was 
when  they  met.  For  at  her  elbow  marched  Roy  Coykendall, 
plainly  infatuated  and  apparently  infatuating. 

Clelia  gave  Nony  a  scorching  glare  through  nanowed 
eyelids.  Then  she  smiled  as  she  declared  war: 

"So  that's  your  little  game,  eh?  All  right,  old  dear! 
I'll  just  sit  in  with  you  and  I'll  make  you  sweat." 

She  greeted  Larrick  effusively,  partly  for  Norry's  annoy- 
ance, partly  because  she  found  him  as  exotic  as  he  found  her. 

Seeing  from  their  constraint  that  Coykendall  and  Larrick 
had  not  met,  she  made  the  introduction,  and  now  Larrick 
was  compelled  to  shake  hands  and  be  amiable  to  the  man 
he  had  wanted  to  kill.  Coykendall  was  innocent  of  having 
offended  Larrick;  ignorant,  indeed,  of  his  very  existence. 

He  was  so  curt  in  his  manner  that  Larrick  was  spared  the 
task  of  pretending  cordiality. 

But  he  felt  as  helpless  as  one  who  has  partaken  of  his 
enemy's  salt.  Coykendall  was  protected  from  destruction 
by  all  the  sacred  laws  of  hospitality,  and  protected  even 
from  criticism  by  the  warning  Clelia  had  unwittingly  given 
Larrick  that  attacks  on  Coykendall  only  endeared  him  to  her. 


CLELIA  269 

There  was  something  of  elfin  malice  in  the  serene  smile 
that  flickered  about  Clelia's  young  mouth  as  she  regarded  the 
three  big  men  hating  one  another  bitterly  for  her  sweet  sake. 

Larrick  admitted  his  defeat  to  himself  in  advance.  He 
was  so  disheartened  that  he  went  to  his  room  and,  more  for 
company  than  for  courtesy,  wrote  an  answer  to  Nancy 
Fleet's  neglected  letter. 

It  was  a  labored  composition,  awkwardly  explaining  that 
he  had  planned  to  come  to  Newport,  but  that  Norry  Frewin 
had  insisted  in  dragging  him  off  to  the  mountains.  He 
spoke  vaguely  of  a  crowd  of  people,  most  of  whose  names 
he  could  not  remember.  Of  Coykendall  he  made  a  brief 
and  acrid  mention,  and  regretted  that  Nancy  had  withdrawn 
the  permission  to  rid  the  earth  of  him. 

As  Larrick  put  the  letter  in  the  post  box  Clelia  came  up. 
He  wished  that  she  had  not  caught  him,  for  he  saw  by  the 
teasing  lift  of  her  eyebrows  that  she  suspected  him  of  writing 
to  another  woman. 

He  did  not  realize  that  in  her  then  humor  this  would  make 
him  all  the  more  interesting  to  Clelia.  She  was  at  the  hour 
of  a  girl's  life  when  captivating  men  and  despoiling  rivals 
become  primal  instinct.  What  we  call  "nature"  has  what 
we  call  "purpose"  in  it,  and  is  usually  quite  ruthless.  It 
makes  for  romance,  the  mother  of  misery  and  crime. 

The  guests  at  the  camp  took  up  familiar  activities,  as  if 
they  were  an  army  moved  into  a  new  territory;  but  every- 
thing they  did  was  curious  to  Larrick. 

There  was  everything  to  do.  Moods  of  utter  simplicity 
and  naturalness,  landscape  worship,  mountain  climbing, 
fishing,  boating,  swimming,  and  mere  basking  alternated  with 
spasms  of  city  gayety,  flirtations,  billiard  games,  dances  in 
the  camp,  motor  parties  to  other  camps  and  to  big  hotels 
where  orchestras  jazzed  and  crowds  spun. 

Larrick  was  su  prised  to  find  himself  not  only  accepted, 
but  cultivated.  Beautiful  women  cast  languishing  eyes 
upon  him,  sophisticated  men  asked  his  advice  or  encouraged 
him  to  talk.  Even  Clelia  singled  him  out  for  her  favor. 

When  he  was  in  danger  of  a  pride  of  success  he  would 


27o  BEAUTY 

fall  into  a  grave  humility.  He  would  decide  that  the 
attentions  paid  to  him  were  not  due  to  his  own  merits,  but 
to  his  oddities. 

He  felt  that  he  was  like  one  of  the  trout  they  fished  for 
with  such  scholarship  and  patience  in  recondite  pools. 
They  were  playing  him,  studying  his  habits,  tickling  him, 
enticing  him  with  gorgeous  artificial  flies,  trying  to  get  him 
on  the  hook,  just  to  see  how  game  a  fight  he  would  make. 
The  wilder  he  was,  the  better  they  liked  him. 

This  feeling  crushed  him  and  drove  him  to  long  exiles. 
But  Clelia's  magnetism  drew  him  back.  Sometimes  she 
mocked  him  openly;  sometimes  she  seemed  to  like  him 
sincerely;  sometimes  she  seemed  to  use  him  only  as  a 
dummy  for  the  vexation  of  Norry  or  Coykendall. 

Larrick  was  glad  to  see  Coykendall  angry,  but  it  hurt 
him  to  find  Norry  regarding  him  with  bewilderment.  The 
two  men  were  in  a  predicament,  indeed.  Larrick  had 
saved  Norry's  life,  yet  that  did  not  seem  to  justify  Larrick 
in  stealing  Norry's  sweetheart.  It  did  not  seem  quite  right 
to  compel  Norry  to  give  up  his  sweetheart.  The  mutual 
obligation  was  an  exquisite  anguish  to  both  men. 

Then  Nancy  Fleet  added  herself  to  the  problem.  A  few 
days  after  Larrick  mailed  her  his  letter  he  received  a  tele- 
gram that  puzzled  him  utterly.  It  simply  said,  "Who  is 
she?" 

While  he  was  still  marveling,  as  men  do  at  the  mysterious 
power  of  women  to  see  through  their  clumsy  subterfuges, 
Mrs.  Roantree  read  aloud  at  dinner  a  day  letter  from 
Nancy  Fleet: 

"Caught  bad  cold  in  the  surf  and  can't  shake  it  off.  Doctor 
recommends  White  Mountains,  but  I  would  much  rather  come  to 
you,  dear,  if  it  is  quite  convenient  and  you  are  not  crowded. 
Please  be  quite  frank.  Affectionate  good  wishes." 

When  the  telegram  was  read  everybody  clamored  for 
Nancy  as  a  good  old  scout  and  great  sport,  and  nobody 
glanced  inquiringly  at  Larrick.  Nobody  dreamed  that  he 
had  more  than  a  casual  acquaintance  with  the  brilliant 
Miss  Fleet. 


CLELIA  271 

Mrs.  Roantree  sent  Nancy  a  hearty  command  to  come 
at  once.  When  she  arrived  she  coughed  once  or  twice  and 
said: 

"Of  course  the  cough  was  only  an  excuse.  Do  you  mind 
if  I  don't  keep  it  up  ? " 

Larrick  had  to  confess  to  himself  that  she  was  lusciously 
beautiful,  tremendously  alive.  He  was  dismayed  to  find  a 
hint  of  melancholy  and  of  humble  terror  in  her  attitude  to 
him.  An  intuition  that  he  promptly  discarded,  as  men 
do  their  best  instincts,  told  him  that  she  loved  him  and 
had  followed  him  and  was  afraid  that  some  other  woman 
was  getting  him  away  from  her. 

This  was  too  ridiculous  to  be  seriously  considered,  but 
he  took  pains  to  be  attentive  to  her.  He  did  not  suspect 
that  in  his  effort  to  be  cordial  the  effort  was  the  most  con- 
spicuous thing  about  his  cordiality.  He  did  not  realize 
that  even  when  he  sat  close  to  Nancy  his  eyes  were  inces- 
santly pursuing  Clelia.  But  Nancy  could  all  too  easily 
understand.  She  made  no  battle.  She  tried  the  effect  of 
philandering  with  Randel,  but  that  seemed  to  relieve  Larrick. 
She  was  too  fine  a  sportswoman  or  too  clever  to  make  any 
attack  on  Clelia.  She  rather  praised  her  and  threw  Larrick 
into  her  company,  giving  Clelia  every  advantage  that 
Coykendall  and  Norry  permitted. 

And  so  the  days  and  the  nights  ran  away  at  one  another's 
heels,  Nancy  watching  Larrick,  who  watched  Norry  and 
Coykendall,  who  watched  each  other  and  Clelia. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

ONE  night,  after  a  brief  piazza  dance  to  music  whanged 
out  by  an  overworked  phonograph,  the  spell  of  the 
moon  upon  the  far  reaches  of  the  lake  seemed  to  rebuke  the 
flippancy  of  the  crowd. 

They  stood  by  the  railing  or  lounged  upon  it,  gazing  out 
into  the  spacious  loveliness  of  the  night. 

•Che  mountains  and  the  thronged  cedars  made  a  vast 
black  iron  caldron  wherein  the  moonlit  waters  simmered 
and  worked  and  flashed  as  if  all  the  quicksilver  in  the  world 
were  astir. 

Clelia  sniffed  the  air  and  the  adventure  like  a  cub  she- 
wolf  feeling  the  night  calling  her  feet.  She  sighed: 

"There'll  not  be  many  more  such  moons.  I  think  I'll  have 
to  take  a  farewell  spin  in  my  canoe.  Who'll  come  along?" 

Frewin  and  Coykendall  leaped  to  her  side  and  offered 
themselves.  Other  men  volunteered  with  less  zest. 

Larrick  alone  did  not  speak.  He  dared  not  vie  with  these 
others;  besides,  he  was  at  the  side  of  Nancy  Fleet  and  still 
aglow  from  dancing  with  her.  So  Clelia  said: 

"I'll  take  the  cowboy.    Come  along,  you!" 

Larrick  glanced  toward  Nancy.  She  nodded  carelessly 
with  a  reluctance  he  did  not  guess.  He  followed  Clelia  to 
the  landing. 

Larrick  was  afraid  of  a  canoe.  He  placed  it  high  among 
the  things  he  dreaded.  He  found  it  far  less  steady  than  the 
most  epileptic  broncho. 

But  men  are  foolhardy  when  women  challenge  their 
courage,  and  he  would  rather  have  drowned  than  decline. 

Clelia  would  not  let  him  paddle,  but  made  him  seat  himself 
on  the  floor  with  his  back  against  the  bow.  She  knelt  before 
him  like  a  worshiper  making  a  strange  dance  of  the  arms 
for  his  pleasure. 


CLELIA  273 

She  was  flippant  at  first  and  called  him  her  lazy  Iroquois 
chief  and  herself  his  hard-working  squaw.  But  by  and  by 
the  glamour  bemused  her  and  solemnized  her  mood. 

From  the  piazza  the  canoe  was  only  a  dark  bough  slowly 
adrift  in  the  bright  waters  and  soon  it  was  concealed  by  the 
very  radiance  that  enveloped  it. 

To  Larrick  in  the  canoe  the  camp  with  its  lights  was  a 
village  receding  slowly.  But  Clelia's  eyes  were  on  the 
wilderness  ahead.  She  was  returning  to  the  primeval,  and 
her  heart  seemed  to  feel  a  deeper  pagan  piety  than  it  had 
often  known. 

The  wild,  untamable  Clelia  was  gone,  left  at  home.  She 
was  as  earnest  as  a  night  bird  winging  with  long,  slow 
pinion  strokes  across  a  lake. 

There  was  a  mystery  in  the  very  ceremony  of  dipping  the 
paddle  on  this  side  and  dipping  it  on  that,  again,  again,  again; 
letting  the  blade  turn  as  she  drew  it  against  the  boat,  lifting 
it  with  its  rill  of  silver  beads  rolling  back  to  the  lake,  dipping 
it  deep  again. 

After  a  long  silent  while  they  came  to  an  outthrust 
headland  and  she  turned  the  prow  into  the  new  bay  it 
disclosed.  She  cast  a  farewell  glance  over  shoulder  at 
the  faint  lights  of  the  ramp.  They  twinkled  out  as  the 
boat  proceeded. 

And  now  she  and  Larrick  were  alone,  indeed,  on  the  earth 
and  upon  the  face  of  the  waters,  so  alone  that  even  a  deer 
could  not  be  expected  to  come  down  and  drink  and  lift  a 
muzzle  dripping  silver  like  the  silver-dripping  paddle. 

The  absence  of  every  sign  of  a  witness,  human  or  animal, 
influenced  the  spirit  of  the  adventure.  There  was  a  sense 
of  exultant  fear  in  the  voyage.  The  water  was  very  deep 
and  one  felt  death  to  be  crouching  far  below  under  the 
glittering  mantle  of  the  surface.  And  the  opportunity  was 
deeper  still  for  any  deep  of  evil  or  lawlessness  that  might 
urge  itself  upon  either  of  them.  They  were  suspended,  as  it 
were,  in  a  center  where  there  was  no  law,  no  gravity,  there- 
fore no  evil  and  no  good.  Nothing  was  virtuous  or  vile  or 
of  fame  or  infamy.  Since  they  were  not  beheld,  they  seemed 
not  to  be  beholden.  To  be  held  is  to  be  upheld,  and,  lacking 


274  BEAUTY 

even  the  support  of  spies  and  eavesdroppers,  they  were 
curiously  afraid. 

They  were  in  the  fourth  dimension  morally,  and  utterly 
lost.  Being  lost  to  all  the  familiar  landmarks  of  conduct, 
they  were  curiously  awed  without  impulse  in  any  direction. 

"I'm  glad  you're  along,"  said  Clelia.  "If  you  weren't, 
I'd  be  scared  to  death." 

"What  of?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know — of  the  loneliness,  I  suppose." 

"And  you're  not  afraid  of  me?" 

Elsewhere  she  would  have  laughed  at  this,  but  now  she 
shook  her  head  with  a  kind  of  wonder,  and  murmured: 

"I  haven't  been:    Ought  I  to  be?" 

"I  hope  not.     I  hope  I  hope  not." 

This  was  perilous  with  implications,  and  she  made  no 
comment. 

Larrick  was  a  bit  terrified  by  what  he  had  unintentionally 
hinted,  and  he  said  no  more.  He  watched  the  long  strokes 
of  the  paddle  she  managed  with  the  grace  of  a  scythe- 
swinging  reaper,  but  in  a  different  plane  and  rhythm. 

Her  arms  and  shoulders  modulated  from  contour  to 
contour  of  enthralling  melodiousness. 

She  took  up  the  paddle,  swung  it  over,  drove  it  into  the 
gurgling  moonlight,  and  pressed  it  home,  then  took  it  up 
again  and  swung  it  to  the  other  side  and  dipped  it  in  and 
took  it  up  again. 

Suddenly,  when  he  had  been  so  wrought  upon  by  the  re- 
iterated grage  that  he  could  have  cried  out,  she  whispered, 
"I'm  tired!"  and  rested,  sitting  back  on  her  heels. 

In  spite  of  his  fear  of  overturning  the  boat,  Larrick  could 
not  resist  the  impulse  to  draw  nearer  to  her.  A  kind  of 
spiritual  gravity  drew  them  together  here  where  there  was 
nothing  to  check  them.  There  was  compulsion  to  com- 
panionship in  that  somber  loneliness.  Her  eyes,  vague  and 
fatigued,  wondered  at  him.  She  smiled,  but  wistfully. 

With  heart  hammering  as  if  he  were  entering  battle,  he 
put  forth  his  hand  and  touched  her  fingers.  She  did  not 
cast  it  away  or  retreat.  She  let  him  hold  her  little  chilly 
palms  in  his.  He  made  an  excuse  of  chafing  them  warm. 


CLELIA  275 

He  was  emboldened  enough  now  to  kneel  forward  and  try 
to  draw  her  to  him,  but  this  was  too  much.  She  put  him 
away,  shaking  her  head  without  anger,  but  with  earnestness. 

"This  night's  too  perfect  to  spoil  it  with  silly  spooning." 

Spooning  was  still  silly  to  her!  It  had  never  become 
beautiful  or  fearsome.  Larrick  made  a  sly  insinuation, 
"  Nobody  can  see  us." 

She  took  him  up  unexpectedly: 

"God  can.  This  place  seems  terribly  full  of  God.  And 
He  is  all  eyes.  And  if  He  weren't,  I'm  in  no  mood.  I  hate 
love,  anyway.  I  never  could  see  the  sense  of  it,  or  even  the 
fun." 

It  was  no  place  or  time  for  argument  or  reason.  The 
parley  was  in  disaccord  with  the  huge  hush  of  the  night. 

She  put  the  paddle  back  to  its  task. 

The  water  tinkled  like  a  serenading  mandolin,  but  there 
was  more  music  in  Clelia's  poses.  The  canoe  glided  slowly 
past  a  vast  bulk  of  rock  and  shadow,  then  pushed  into  a 
narrows  where  the  trees  visited  the  edge  of  the  water  and 
paused  as  if  about  to  wade. 

Before  they  quite  realized  it  Clelia  and  Larrick  were 
bending  to  escape  the  low  gesture  of  a  long  arm,  its  needles 
like  a  soft  shawl  depending  from  it. 

And  then  they  were  aground  with  a  vaulted  arch  of  trees 
above  them.  Clelia  shipped  the  paddle  and  rested.  Larrick 
could  just  see  her  in  a  silhouette  against  deep  shadow  for  a 
moment  before  she  was  absorbed  by  the  fragrant  gloom. 
Overhead  there  were  flecks  and  shreds  of  light  among  the 
treetops,  patches  and  plaques  of  silver  on  high  leaves  and 
branches.  But  none  of  the  glimmer  reached  themselves. 
Where  they  were  was  blackness  so  deep  that  they  could 
not  see  each  other.  They  were  not  only  without  witnesses, 
they  were  not  witnesses  even  of  each  other  or  of  themselves. 

Light,  they  say,  is  the  enemy  of  love.  Here,  then,  was 
darkness  enough  to  befriend  him  utterly. 

And  now,  strangely,  with  the  eyes  denied  their  offices, 
with  the  cynical,  too-much  seeing  eyes  not  so  much  blind- 
folded as  annulled,  the  rest  of  their  senses  claimed  freedom, 
threw  off  restraint — like  slaves  on  a  Saturnalian  holiday. 


276  BEAUTY 

The  flesh  seemed  to  put  forth  antennas.  The  hands  groped, 
burning,  daring.  The  nerves  imagined  and  conspired. 

Larrick  felt  for  Clelia,  and  when  he  found  her  she  seemed 
to  be  glad  to  be  found.  The  canoe  was  so  steadied  by  the 
ground  it  rested  on  that  it  did  not  rock  as  he  rose  to  his 
knees.  He  drew  Clelia  into  his  arms  and  she  made  no 
protest. 

She  let  him  kiss  her  cheek  very  timidly,  though  she 
turned  her  lips  from  his. 

When  he  whispered  a  prayer  that  she  kiss  him  she  shook 
her  head,  but  only  to  be  coaxed  a  little  more.  At  last  she 
kissed  him — with  so  childish  a  stab  of  the  lips  that  his 
heart  ached  for  her  and  he  abhorred  the  demands  that  were 
raging  in  him.  He  would  not  ask  her  for  another  kiss, 
though  he  could  tell  that  she  waited  and  was  willing. 

Then,  as  if  she  had  tasted  new  wine  for  the  first  time, 
she  returned  to  the  cup.  She  pressed  her  lips  to  his  with 
soft  fire — moon  fire.  He  was  amazed  by  the  unbelievable 
sweetness.  He  forgot  mercy  and  clenched  her  to  him,  and 
She  flung  her  arms  about  him.  He  felt  how  strong  her  arms 
were.  She  laughed,  not  with  her  usual  laughter  of  ridicule 
or  amusement,  but  with  the  cooing  sob  of  an  enamored  dove. 

And  when  he  desperately  crushed  her  close  she  fought  him, 
but  with  no  struggle  of  anger  or  escape — with  rivalry  in 
ardor.  Only  for  a  moment  she  vied  with  him,  then  her 
arms  relaxed.  She  sank  back  exhausted,  mazed,  dizzied. 
Larrick  was  afraid  she  would  swoon. 

A  fierce  and  untimely  pity,  an  unwelcome  pity,  swept  him. 

He  stared  toward  her  in  vain,  trying  to  imagine  the  tor- 
mented beauty  of  her  youth.  She  moaned  and  leaned  against 
his  shoulder,  and  now  he  merely  tapped  her  arm  with  a 
brotherliness,  as  of  consolation  in  grief. 

He  would  have  thought  it  sacrilege  to  believe  her  disap- 
pointed or  baffled  by  his  change  of  mood. 

Perhaps  she  was.  There  is  an  instinct  of  surrender  as  old 
as  womankind,  and  here  among  these  vastly  ancient  moun- 
tains in  this  old  night  conscience  was  a  parvenu,  a  meddler, 
a  Puritan.  But  Larrick  could  not  help  it.  The  instinct  of 
protecting  one  who  was  conquered  was  stronger,  if  younger, 


CLELIA  277 

than  any  savage  impulse.  He  was  as  helpless  to  despoil 
as  Clelia  to  defend.  Perhaps  if  he  had  pressed  her  further 
she  would  have  recoiled  and  revolted  in  horror  of  his  pro- 
faning approach.  But  now  she  was  his. 

But  he  was  very  sorrowful  in  the  victory  of  his  better  self 
over  his  wilder  self. 

Strange  how  every  phase  of  temptation  seems  to  have 
been  emphasized  except  its  pathos. 

The  fire  and  the  fascination,  the  danger  and  the  evil,  have 
been  incessantly  described,  but  who  has  told  of  the  pitifulness 
of  two  souls  terrified  by  their  own  and  each  other's  bodies, 
making  an  anguish  of  their  rapture,  trying  to  decide,  to 
remember,  to  foresee,  to  be  good,  to  be  glad,  to  let  their 
senses  sing,  to  rejoice  in  ecstasy  while  ecstasy  exists,  and  yet 
to  cling  to  honesty  and  to  save  themselves  and  each  the  other 
from  despair. 

Between  a  bright  heaven  and  a  black  hell  they  swing  in 
agony.  And  their  wretchedness  is  greater  than  their  delight. 

Larrick  was  unutterably  miserable  in  his  triumph.  The 
girl  that  had  mocked  him  was  his  victim,  and  he  could  not 
accept  her.  He  held  her  in  mute  woe  till  at  last  she  resumed 
the  mastery  of  herself.  Then,  whether  in  anger  at  him  or  at 
herself,  she  threw  his  arm  aside,  caught  up  the  paddle,  and 
with  some  difficulty  got  the  canoe  off  the  bar  and  into  the 
water  again. 

The  prow  moved  slowly  from  the  dark  into  the  gleaming 
world  again,  into  an  almost  high  noon  of  radiance. 

Clelia  drove  the  canoe  across  the  lake  with  fierce  haste  and 
with  a  wrath  that  Larrick  dared  not  offend  with  words. 
The  mountains  and  the  forests  made  no  comment,  yet  seemed 
to  regret  the  wasted  opportunity  for  wickedness,  the  un- 
pardonable neglect  to  sin  when  the  time  was  perfect. 

Yet  Clelia 's  anger  could  not  last  in  that  enchanted  scene. 
And  by  and  by  her  mood  grew  dreamier,  her  rhythm  musical 
once  more. 

As  they  rounded  the  point  that  revealed  the  camp  again 
and  showed  them  that  the  world  and  its  people  waited  for 
them,  wondering  and  imagining,  perhaps,  Clelia  mumbled 
very  humbly: 


278  BEAUTY 

"I'm  terribly  grateful." 

"For  what?"  he  barely  whispered. 

But  she  did  not  answer  him. 

She  seemed  to  be  so  happy  that  she  could  face  the  eyes  of 
inquisitors  without  guilt  that  she  laughed  with  a  redeemed 
girlishness  and  flicked  a  little  glistening  spray  from  the 
paddle  over  the  solemn  Larrick. 

But  he  did  not  laugh.  He  was  not  sure  how  glad  he  was, 
if  glad  at  all.  Manlike,  he  was  doomed  to  feel  a  certain 
shame  for  failing  to  play  the  satyr  or  at  least  the  faun; 
for  letting  the  nymph  escape  unscathed. 

He  had  owned  Clelia  for  a  moment  and  had  let  her  go — 
for  the  moment  that  was  to  be  forever. 

Perhaps  he  was  the  only  man  that  ever  gave  her  a  glimpse 
of  passion,  that  "sorrowful  Paradise,  that  sweet  hell." 

The  canoe  glided  on  the  sand  at  the  landing  place  and 
Larrick,  stepping  out  cautiously,  offered  his  hand  to  Clelia, 
helped  her  ashore,  and  drew  the  canoe  high  and  dry. 

He  turned  to  find  Norry  Frewin  waiting. 

Clelia  walked  past  Norry  with  her  familiar  haughty  indif- 
ference and  her  contempt  for  explanations.  She  went  on 
up  to  the  house,  but  Norry  seized  Larrick  by  the  shoulders 
and  in  a  frenzy  shook  him  and  snarled. 

Larrick  started  up  and  stared.  It  was  not  Norry  who 
shook  him,  but  Randel,  the  sculptor.  They  were  not  stand- 
ing by  the  lake's  edge  in  the  moonlight.  Larrick  was  in  a 
chair  and  Randel  was  bending  over  him,  whispering: 

"Wake  up.  Don't  make  a  noise.  But  come  along 
quietly." 

Larrick  dashed  his  hand  across  his  eyes.  He  was  in  the 
living  room  of  the  Big  House.  At  his  elbow  was  a  window 
patterned  with  a  lace  of  frost,  delicately  pink  with  auroral 
light. 

Outside,  the  snow  was  everywhere,  but  ruddy.  The  air 
was  throbbing  with  the  daybreak.  In  a  shaft  of  ice  stood 
Clelia,  her  hands  at  prayer,  still  at  prayer.  But  a  rosy  glow 
quickened  her  flesh  with  the  magic  of  young  blood  hastening, 
rejoicing. 


Book  V 
THE  ARTISTS  AND  THE  LAW 


CHAPTER  I 

OTILL  a  little  dizzy  from  the  impetus  of  his  dream,  Larrick 
O  felt  the  earth  swim  beneath  him  as  he  set  feet  again  on 
the  solid  ground. 

During  a  night  he  had  cruised  about  his  whole  past  life 
with  the  speed  and  silence  of  the  Flying  Dutchman.  And 
now  he  had  crashed  into  the  shore  and  he  must  walk  the  land 
upon  sea  legs  giddily. 

His  body  was  tingling  with  the  inaction  of  his  long  trance 
in  the  chair  by  the  window.  His  mind  was  atingle,  like  "feet 
asleep,"  and  thought  was  an  anguish  he  could  not  shake  off. 

The  shock  was  like  a  hammer  smash.  Randel  had  hurled 
him  almost  from  the  arms  of  Clelia,  alive  in  memory,  and  as 
his  eyes  made  out  the  world  darkling  in  the  slow  sunrise 
he  descried  through  the  window  Clelia  dead  and  embalmed 
in  crystal,  still  standing  at  prayer,  all  life  arrested,  stock-still 
as  if  a  voice  had  cried,  Halt ! 

Larrick  stared  at  her  as  Lot  might  have  stood  marveling  at 
his  wife,  one  moment  a  woman  who  ran  with  reverted  gaze, 
and  the  next  moment  a  pillar  of  salt. 

It  had  been  Larrick's  demand  in  the  far  ago  of  yesterday 
afternoon  that  the  sculptor  Randel  and  the  painter  Burnley 
should  combine  their  arts  in  a  monument  of -Clelia's  graces. 
Between  then  and  now  Larrick  had  wandered  so  wide  in 
reverie  and  dream  that  he  had  forgotten  the  day  before  in 
the  fog  of  the  weeks  and  months  before. 

Randel  had  to  remind  him  of  it  all  as  he  led  him  from 
the  cold  house  where  the  fire  had  died  into  the  terrifying  cold 
of  the  outdoors  where  the  winter  was  at  full  rigor. 

Randel  could  speak  here  with  less  risk  of  waking  the  other 
members  of  the  household,  whose  interference  he  wished  to 
avoid.  He  muttered  to  Larrick,  his  breath  like  white  smoke 
in  the  frosty  air: 


282  BEAUTY 

"Don't  you  remember?  You  wanted  a  statue  or  some- 
thing made  of  poor  little  Clelia  ?  Well,  I've  decided  to  make 
one  and  I  need  your  help." 

Larrick's  teeth  were  chattering  with  the  cold  less  than 
with  the  dread  of  Clelia 's  ice-sheeted  ghost  standing  before 
him.  Randel  mumbled  on : 

"I'll  do  my  best  to  preserve  her  memory — the  memory 
of  her  body.  If  the  people  in  there  find  it  out  they'll 
try  to  stop  me.  They'll  sleep  for  some  time  yet,  I  hope. 
There's  another  reason  for  hurry.  When  the  guide  gets 
back  he'll  probably  bring  a  sheriff  or  a  coroner  or  some 
horrible  meddler  along  to  prevent  us  or  to  drive  me  mad 
with  questions. 

"  For  all  I  know,  I  may  be  committing  some  crime  in  doing 
this,  but  I'm  going  through  with  it  if  I  have  to  spend  the  rest 
of  my  life  in  the  penitentiary.  If  you  are  afraid  to  be 
involved,  go  on  back." 

"I  don't  know  just  what  you're  thinking  of,"  said  Larrick, 
"but  I'm  not  afraid  of  anybody  or  anything  except  losing 
Clelia." 

The  sculptor  explained : 

"I'm  going  to  take  a  cast  of  Clelia  just  as  she  is." 

"How?" 

"  Help  me  and  you'll  see.  You've  heard  of  life  masks  and 
death  masks." 

"I've  heard  of  'em,  but  I've  never  seen  one." 

"Well,  you'll  see  one  now  unlike  anything  else  that  ever 
was,  I  imagine.  I'm  going  to  make  a  death  mask — you 
could  almost  say  a  life  mask — of  Clelia's  whole  body. 
I  may  not  live  long  myself,  but  if  I  can  bequeath  this  to 
the  only  child  I'll  ever  have — posterity — what  does  anything 
else  matter?  We  artists  are  like  the  insects  that  Fabre  tells 
about;  we  have  one  supreme  instinct — to  sacrifice  ourselves 
to  the  future.  We  are  always  committing  what  you  might 
call  productive  suicide.  But  we  mustn't  waste  time  here. 
We've  got  to  move  this  block  of  ice  over  to  my  studio  hut, 
and  it's  not  going  to  be  easy." 

In  one  of  the  many  little  cabins  about  the  camp  Randel 
had  improvised  an  atelier.  Planning  to  spend  the  winter 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    283 

in  the  Adirondacks  for  his  lungs'  sake,  he  had  arranged  to 
keep  busy  for  his  soul's  sake.  He  had  shipped  up  the 
equipment  of  sculpture,  tools  for  coercing  clay,  wax  and 
marble  and  oiled  clay,  wax  and  a  little  marble  to  be  coerced, 
materials  for  armatures  and  for  molds,  plaster  of  Paris  and 
gelatine.  He  wanted  to  be  able  to  make  casts  of  his  work 
for  preservation  and  future  use. 

He  studied  the  ice  inclosing  the  statue  he  would  release, 
as  quarried  marble  envelops  the  occult  form  the  sculptor 
divines  within. 

Randel  mused  aloud,  professionally  aloof  from  every  con- 
sideration but  the  artistic : 

"Somebody  said  that  sculpture  was  an  easy  art  because  all 
you  have  to  do  is  to  take  a  block  of  marble  and  break  off 
what  you  don't  want.  That's  the  case  here,  except  that  we've 
got  to  get  rid  of  that  ice  very  carefully.  If  we  try  to  knock 
it  or  chop  it  off  we  may  break  away  a  piece  so  big  that  it 
might  carry  with  it  a  fragment  of  our  statue;  for  the  poor 
child  is  ice  herself  now,  and — " 

Larrick  did  not  need  to  cry,  "Stop!"  His  whole  frame 
quivered  from  an  assault  of  intolerable  imagination.  Randel 
forbore  to  put  words  to  the  horror,  and  nodded  to  Larrick 
to  lay  hold  of  the  burden. 

Larrick  was  in  all  the  anguish  of  the  first  dawn  after  a 
death — that  fearful,  ruthless  awakening  of  gigantic  beauty 
and  industry  carrying  forward  the  wheel  of  the  world  that 
has  flung  off  a  beloved  life.  But  any  activity  was  welcome 
as  an  escape  from  taking  his  grief  lying  down. 

The  ice  was  hard  to  manage.  It  burned  and  stuck  to  the 
bare  hands.  When  they  put  on  gloves  its  weight  taxed  their 
skill. 

But  somehow,  with  awkward  tugging  and  shoving,  they 
lowered  it  to  the  horizontal,  and  pushed  it  from  the  porch, 
then  slid  it  across  the  snow.  It  broke  through  the  crust  at 
times,  and  the  lifting  of  it  was  a  grievous  toil. 

It  was  hard  for  Larrick  to  master  his  own  revulsion  against 
such  profanation.  He  felt  like  an  uncouth  baggageman 
mauling  a  casketed  saint. 

The  ice  was  a  huge  prism;  at  every  turn  it  flashed  new 

19 


284  BEAUTY 

colors,  quivered  with  tremulous  liquors  of  strange  tints  that 
transformed  Clelia  eerily. 

A  troublesome  obstacle  intervened  at  the  door  of  Randel's 
hut,  a  granite  bowlder  set  there  for  ornament.  It  was 
necessary  now  to  hoist  the  shaft  erect  again  and  work  it 
round  from  corner  to  corner.  At  the  crucial  moment 
Randel  slipped  and  fell.  He  would  have  dragged  the 
column  down  upon  him  if  Larrick  had  not  hugged  it  and 
flung  himself  back. 

His  feet  slid,  too,  and  the  shaft  lurched  and  toppled  to 
one  side  against  the  sharp  edges  of  the  bowlder.  Larrick 
tried  to  break  the  fall  with  his  own  body,  but  great  splinters 
of  ice  split  and  crackled,  and  a  long  mass  fell  from  between 
his  arms.  When  he  caught  hold  anew  he  found  that  one  of 
his  hands  embraced  one  of  Clelia 's  shoulders. 

Through  his  glove  he  could  feel  first  the  apple  roundness, 
but  then  the  awful  unyieldingness  and  the  hideous  cold.  He 
remembered  again  the  terrible  words  he  had  read  in  Park- 
man's  description  of  the  frozen  Indian,  "with  tooth  and 
claw  the  famished  wildcat  strives  in  vain  to  pierce  the  frigid 
marble  of  his  limbs." 

Only  a  few  nights  ago  he  had  felt  that  shoulder  of  Clelia's 
in  his  palm.  He  remembered  now  the  mellowness  of  it,  the 
warmth,  the  supple  strength,  the  motion  of  the  muscles 
gliding  a  little  beneath  the  skin.  And  now — he  clasped 
granite.  He  wavered  and  would  have  fallen  if  Randel  had 
not  scrambled  to  his  feet  and  caught  the  shaft  and  steadied 
it,  and  Larrick  with  it,  until  Larrick  could  regain  his  balance 
and  compel  his  soul  to  the  repose  it  needed. 

The  sculptor's  training,  his  experience,  and  his  ideals 
had  given  him  something  of  the  apathy  of  a  surgeon  who  can 
and  must  suppress  sympathy  and,  with  an  academic  lofti- 
ness, wield  inhumanity  for  humanity's  sake. 

But  Larrick  was  like  the  lover,  the  husband  who  sees  his 
beloved  going  to  the  operating  room  and  has  no  drug  of 
habit  to  deaden  his  prophetic  torment. 


CHAPTER  II 

T  ARRICK  was  rather  a  hindrance  than  a  help  to  Randel, 
jL-rf  but  at  length  they  brought  the  shaft  inside  the  cabin 
and  closed  the  door  upon  the  mystery. 

Now  Larrick  felt  like  a  peasant  in  the  laboratory  of  an 
alchemist,  a  wizard's  den  full  of  strange  machineries  for 
necromantic  purposes. 

Randel  made  a  page  of  him,  commanding  him  sharply  to  do 
this  or  that,  fetch  this  or  that,  lend  a  hand  or  get  out  of  the 
way. 

He  was  revolted  almost  to  flight  or  to  forcible  prevention 
by  the  grewsomeness  of  the  work  and  the  harrowing  familiar- 
ity that  Randel  observed  in  taking  the  cast  of  every  portion 
of  Clelia's  body,  which  was  hardly  so  much  covered  as 
emphasized  by  the  silken  gown  about  it.  The  fact  that  he 
kept  the  figure  standing  enforced  the  thought  that  Clelia 
must  somehow  be  aware  of  all  that  was  done. 

At  times  Larrick  wanted  to  beat  Randel  down  as  a  kind  of 
ghoulish  degenerate,  a  slave  buyer  fondling  a  shackled  virgin 
and  committing  sacrilege  upon  her  sacred  flesh. 

He  was  restrained  by  the  counterhorror  of  burying  away 
in  the  earth  such  beauty  without  a  memorial  of  it.  This 
seemed  a  more  wanton  deed.  Randel  was  robbing  the 
grave,  indeed,  but  only  of  the  beauty  that  it  would  not 
prize  or  preserve. 

So  Larrick  attended  the  sculptor* as  his  raw  apprentice. 

First,  there  was  the  ice  to  remove.  This  was  done  with 
small  chisels,  carefully  directed  by  the  dexterousness  of  a 
sculptor.  Larrick  carried  the  broken  ice  to  the  door  and 
flung  it  away. 

Randel  released  only  the  face  and  shoulders  at  first,  till 
Clelia  was  like  a  bust  of  herself  upon  a  pedestal.  The  hair 
that  floated,  as  it  were,  in  the  ice  was  a  problem,  but  Randel 


286  BEAUTY 

freed  only  the  front  of  it,  brushing  away  the  dust  of  ice  with 
care. 

In  the  meanwhile  he  had  filled  a  box  with  plaster  of  Paris, 
wetted  it  down,  and  stirred  it  till  it  was  like  thick  cream.  He 
lifted  out  a  double  handful  of  this  and,  approaching  Clelia, 
suddenly  spread  it,  blotting  her  face  from  sight  in  a  white 
blur. 

Larrick  cried  out  at  this  and  his  fist  clenched  to  strike 
even  as  his  knees  gave  way  beneath  him.  Randel,  walking 
back  to  the  box  for  more  plaster,  growled: 

"If  you're  going  to  be  a  sick  fool,  go  on  away  and  don't 
bother  me." 

He  took  pity  on  the  uninitiated  weakling  and  said, 
largely  to  lash  his  own  reluctant  faculties  to  their  supreme 
opportunity: 

"I've  done  this  to  living  people  and  it  didn't  hurt  them. 
I  oiled  their  skin  a  little  to  save  them  pain  when  the  plaster 
was  taken  off,  and  I  put  quills  in  their  nostrils  so  that  they 
could  breathe.  But  I  didn't  hurt  them,  and  I  won't  hurt 
Clelia." 

When  Larrick  had  forced  back  his  qualms  he  said: 

"But  that  scar  in  her  forehead,  the  wound  scar — what  of 
that?  You  may  change  it  so  that  the  weapon  that  killed 
her  can't  be  identified." 

"The  plaster  will  keep  a  perfect  record,"  said  Randel. 
"  It  is  marvelous  what  it  will  do.  If  you  should  write  on  a 
piece  of  paper  with  the  end  of  a  match  so  that  the  eye  could 
not  read  your  words  I  could  take  a  plaster  cast  of  the  writing 
and  get  a  visible  record  of  it.  The  fingerprints,  the  finest, 
tiniest  wrinkles,  will  be  caught  by  the  plaster. 

"  I  took  a  cast  of  a  pair  of  clasped  hands  once,  and  you 
could  see  the  little  lift  one  muscle  gave  another  in  their 
pressure.  It's  marvelous!  We  could  take  this  cast  into 
court." 

Under  Randel's  manipulation  the  exquisite  features  of 
Clelia  were  soon  lost  deep  in  a  thick,  white,  flat  rind.  He 
glanced  at  his  watch  and  said  to  Larrick: 

"Make  a  note  of  the  time.  Remind  me  when  fifteen 
minutes  have  passed.  It  wijU.take  that  long  for  each  bit  to 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    287 

set.  I'm  taking  the  face  in  a  single  mold,  you  see.  Now 
I'll  do  the  throat  and  then  the  shoulders  and  then  the  hair 
in  front." 

With  Clelia's  face  masked,  Larrick  felt  a  little  less  repug- 
nance, and  by  and  by  a  fascination.  Randel  asked  him  if 
he  had  read  Benvenuto  Cellini's  thrilling  account  of  how 
he  made  the  sectional  molds  for  his  statue  of  Perseus  and 
poured  into  them  the  molten  bronze. 

Larrick  shook  his  head. 

"I'm  doing  just  the  opposite."  Randel  sighed.  "Poor 
little  Clelia  was  burning  alive  the  other  day.  She  was  the 
molten  bronze  leaping  and  flaming,  and  now —  Strange 
and  pitiful!  To  think  that  if  Clelia  were  a  trout  and  had 
been  frozen  in  the  ice  we  could  melt  the  ice  and  the  fish 
would  swim  away,  as  alive  as  ever.  But  our  precious 
Clelia  can  never  be  recalled  again.  Some  day  in  the  future 
the  scientists  may  master  the  problem,  but  it  will  be  too 
late  for  this  little  girl.  O  God!  she  was  so  alive,  so  glorious, 
but  she's  beyond  us  somewhere. 

"All  I'm  taking  is  her  outline — her  thousand  and  one 
contours  and  planes  and  curves.  All  I  shall  have  will  be  the 
shell  of  her,  and  not  even  that — just  the  figure  of  her — her 
displacement  in  the  air  or  in  the  water  that  she  loved  so  well. 

"The  equator  is  very  real,  yet  it  is  only  an  imaginary  line. 
Geometrically,  a  plane  or  a  surface  has  only  two  dimensions, 
length  and  width,  and  no  depth  at  all.  So  Clelia's  form  is 
only  an  invisible  sheath.  When  she  was  alive  it  was  an 
elastic  sheath,  finer  than  any  satin.  Yet  that  was  what 
we  knew  her  by. 

"How  could  we  know  her  in  heaven  if  she  lost  that  en- 
velope? Yet,  why  should  she  have  nostrils  and  lips  and  eye- 
lids and  hair  and  shoulders  and  breasts  and  loins  and  legs 
in  heaven?  She  would  have  no  air  to  breathe,  no  food  to 
eat,  no  children  to  bear  or  to  suckle,  no  errands  to  run, 
nothing  earthly  to  do,  would  she?" 

"I  don't  know,"  was  Larrick's  humble  answer,  and  he 
humbled  Randel  with  it. 

"Neither  do  I,"  said  Randel,  "but  it's  a  strange  thing. 
A  sculptor  would  swear  that  only  a  godlike  sculptor  could 


288  BEAUTY 

have  modeled  the  human  form,  yet  science  tells  us  that  it 
was  evolved  in  thousands  of  centuries,  and  we  share  all  our 
elements  with  the  animals  in  some  degree. 

"It  takes  so  little  to  make  a  woman  beautiful  or  to  make 
her  ugly,  but,  oh,  the  difference  to  me! — and  to  her! — and 
to  history!" 

As  he  wandered  on,  his  mind  purposeless  and  roving,  his 
hands  deft  and  positive,  he  made  strange  divisions  in  the  soft 
plaster  with  one  of  his  modeling  tools,  keeping  one  mold 
cleanly  separated  from  another  and  making  little  nobs  that 
he  called  keys. 

After  he  had  obliterated  the  visage,  the  throat,  and  the 
shoulders,  and  built  up  a  white  miter  against  Clelia's  hair, 
he  began  to  break  the  ice  away,  down  to  her  waist.  He 
exercised  the  utmost  care  not  to  disarrange  the  folds  of  the 
silken  nightgown.  He  pondered  aloud,  talking  to  keep  his 
rebellious  emotions  in  discipline.  His  language  was  a  little 
exalted,  as  always  when  he  talked  of  art. 

"What  beautiful  things  folds  and  wrinkles  are  in  drapery! 
Some  of  the  fool  Puritans  think  that  nakedness  is  more 
wicked  than  concealment,  but  it's  the  imagination  that 
furnishes  the  evil  thought,  not  the  revelation.  Look  at  those 
silken  ridges  that  cluster  round  her  little  breast.  They  are 
like  the  work  of  a  skillful  draftsman.  They  have  a  caressing 
touch.  They  are  italics  emphasizing  the  important  words  in 
a  sentence. 

"This  statue  of  Clelia  will  be  a  miracle  of  drapery;  it  will 
be  multitudinous  with  countless  fine  wrinkles,  like  the 
drapery  of  the  little  bas-reliefs  of  the  young  Victory  girls 
on  the  temple  of  the  Nike  Apteros  in  Athens.  You  never 
saw  them,  I  suppose.  They're  beyond  all  praise.  But  this 
will  be  beyond  them.  It  will  be  beyond  anything  that 
was  ever  done,  for  beauty." 

He  shook  tears  of  pity  from  his  eyes  and  reminded  himself 
of  his  official  duty  to  beauty,  his  priestcraft.  He  built  a 
thick  breastplate  of  plaster  along  the  girl's  whole  torse. 
Where  her  bosom  was  revealed  by  the  open  nightgown  he 
laid  on  the  plaster  with  a  heavy  hand.  Where  the  silk 
intervened  he  first  powdered  the  delicate  surface  w&h  a 


THE    ARTISTS    AND    THE   LAW     289 

fine  spray,  flicking  it  from  his  fingers  cautiously  until  the 
slightest  elevations  of  the  fabric  were  covered,  then  working 
more  broadly. 

With  a  sculptor's  habit  and  lore  his  hands  followed  the 
curves  of  the  muscles,  whose  names  and  offices  he  knew, 
sweeping  down  the  varied  planes  of  the  chest,  swathing  the 
breasts  with  spherical  gestures. 

Larrick  forgot  to  watch  the  hour,  but  Randel's  schooled 
fingers  told  him  when  the  plaster,  still  damp,  but  firm,  was 
hardened  enough  to  be  removed. 

Suddenly,  to  Larrick's  astonishment,  he  lifted  a  white  mass 
from  Clelia's  face,  revealing  her  to  them  and  them  to  her 
again,  for,  though  her  eyes  were  hidden  under  their  arched 
lids,  there  seemed  to  be  vision  within.  Larrick  trembled, 
and  the  deeds  that  had  fascinated  him  by  their  technic 
when  her  face  was  veiled  became  once  more  something 
frightful  and  shameless. 

He  recoiled  from  the  first  mold  when  Randel  held  it  before 
him.  It  was  a  deep  intaglio  of  a  face,  the  very  inversion  of 
Clelia's  exquisite  mien,  a  confusion  of  hollows  where  her 
features  had  advanced. 

Randel  set  this  mold  on  the  floor  of  the  cabin  in  a  corner 
and  went  back  to  his  labor.  He  covered  the  praying  hands 
that  had  protruded  for  a  while  from  the  blanket  of  plaster. 
He  made  three  molds  for  the  hands,  and  poured  plaster  down 
between  the  palms,  then  wrapped  them  as  if  in  big  mittens. 

After  a  little  study  Randel  broke  the  ice  away  from 
Clelia's  entire  back. 

"I'll  make  only  one  mold  here,  I  think,"  he  said,  and  with 
great  caution  flicked  the  plaster  again  upon  the  wrinkles  and 
covered  them  all  from  where  the  gown  began  across  the 
shoulder  blades  down  to  the  waist  and  the  small  of  the  back 
and  the  V  at  the  base  of  the  spine  and  the  exquisite  nether 
contours  forming  rounded  eaves  above  the  spring  of  the 
thighs. 

Larrick  neither  watched  nor  listened.  He  was  piling  wood 
on  the  fire.  Like  one  of  Noah's  better  sons,  he  kept  his  eyes 
averted  while  Randel,  who  had  the  priestly  franchise  of  the 
artist,  completed  this  mold  and,  later,  tore  away  the  trans- 


29o'  BEAUTY 

parent  girdle  of  ice  and  girded  the  awesome  fruitless  loins  of 
Clelia  in  plaster. 

There  were  some  fifteen  molds  in  all  to  be  built,  and  each 
as  it  was  removed  was  laid  in  the  corner.  The  molds  of  the 
hair  alone  failed  to  satisfy  Randel.  He  made  one  of  the 
back  of  the  head  and  the  hair  above  it.  He  pointed  out  to 
Larrick,  or  at  least  informed  him,  for  he  would  not  look, 
that  each  of  the  infinitesimal  loose  tendrils  of  hair  was  drawn 
free  without  difficulty,  leaving  a  minute  tube  or  twisted 
canal  in  the  plaster.  But  he  would  have  to  work  over  the 
whole  flame  of  her  floating  tresses,  for,  he  explained,  hair  is 
one  of  the  unconquerable  problems  of  sculpture. 

He  knelt  to  make  molds  like  greaves  for  the  knees  and 
shins.  It  was  all  miracle  to  Larrick,  and  when  he  could 
shake  off  the  sense  of  immmodesty,  of  sacrilege,  and  dread, 
he  was  glad  to  be  the  stoker  who  kept  the  plaster  of  Paris 
stirring,  fetched  and  carried  the  tools,  got  sworn  at  or 
thanked,  and  toted  the  wood  from  the  woodpile  to  the 
furnace  in  the  chimney. 

The  wood  was  withindoors.  Several  days  before  the 
blizzard  had  come  Randel  had  instructed  Jeffers,  the  guide, 
to  pile  at  least  a  cord  of  fuel  against  the  side  wall  of  the 
cabin.  Randel  had  never  foreseen  his  present  unheard-of 
task,  but  he  had  wanted  to  be  kept  warm  at  his  work  and 
to  be  saved  from  carrying  in  snow-incrusted,  frozen  wood 
from  the  outside  when  the  frenzy  was  on  him.  Nor  when 
the  frenzy  was  on  him  did  he  like  to  call  in  a  servant  or  per- 
mit anyone  to  invade  his  presence.  For  an  artist  in  the 
throes  of  creation  is  like  a  bridegroom,  and  what  is  holy  in 
the  embrace  of  the  Muse  becomes  obscene  before  alien  eyes. 

Randel  did  not  object  to  Larrick's  presence  now,  for  the 
man  was  like  a  child  in  his  innocence  of  art.  And  his  very 
horror  of  the  procedure  gave  it  an  enthralling  excitement, 
a  wizardry. 

The  fire  itself  seemed  to  Larrick  part  of  the  diabolic  magic, 
and  it  was  gluttonous  for  the  pine  that  bled  resin  and 
shrieked  as  it  was  bitten  by  the  flames  and  sent  up  in  crimson 
ribbons  of  beauty  and  terror. 

Randel  had  kept  the  form  of  Clelia  as  far  as  possible 


THE    ARTISTS    AND    THE    LAW     291 

from  the  fire  lest  it  melt  the  ice  too  quickly.  Only  his  zeal 
could  have  held  him  to  the  task,  only  his  consecration  to  the 
capture  of  fugitive  grace  and  its  imprisonment  in  a  shelter 
from  oblivion.  He  loved  Clelia  and  loved  her  the  more 
the  more  he  persisted  in  this  epithalamial  intimacy.  Again 
and  again  he  had  to  wrestle  down  a  ferocious  impulse  to  slay 
himself  or  to  run  away  from  his  deed.  The  occasion  was 
unique  and  fleetingly  brief.  Once  he  yielded  to  a  cowardice 
of  chivalry  the  chance  would  be  gone  forever.  Respect 
for  Clelia 's  modesty  would  be  a  shameful  indifference  in  him 
to  the  high  respect  for  her  angelic  beauty.  So  he  forced  him- 
self to  sacrifice  her  to  the  everlastingness  of  her  own  grace. 

But  from  time  to  time  the  sculptor,  whose  blood  was 
thin  and  whose  fingers  turned  to  ice  in  their  icy  labor,  had  to 
borrow  warmth  for  his  livid  hands  and  for  his  shuddering 
soul  at  the  billows  of  warmth  rolling  invisibly  from  the 
flames  that  battened  upon  the  logs,  destroying  the  things 
that  gave  them  birth,  like  devastating  children  eating  up 
their  own  parents;  like  wastrels;  like  the  world  gone  mad 
in  the  war  and  its  aftermath  still  burning  up  its  own  hopes. 

Once  Randel  said,  as  he  held  his  hands  out  to  the  fire: 
"Is  anything  more  beautiful  or  more  shapely  than  a  flame? 
Yet  what  is  it  ?  Oxygen  combines  with  fuel,  and  flames  re^ 
suit,  but  they  come  from  nowhere  and  go  nowhere  and  are 
nothing  but  a  passing  condition.  Yet  each  flame,  like  a 
wave  in  the  sea,  seems  to  have  an  individuality.  People  go 
through  the  world  like  that.  Their  souls  agitate  a  certain 
amount  of  matter  as  flames  do  wood,  then  the  souls  are 
no  longer  there,  and  the  wood  is  ashes. 

"How  many  beautiful  women  have  set  the  world  on  fire! 
And  where  are  they  now?  Where  will  those  wonderful  girls 
and  great  men  go  who  are  burning  up  the  clay  now  in  the 
world?  If  it  were  not  for  this  statue  we  are  making,  Clelia 
would  be  as  lost  as  that  blaze  leaping  up  there  now.  See 
how  fierce  and  lithe  and  rapturous  it  is.  But  now  where  is  it  ? 
Clelia  was  a  flame,  but  she  shall  not  altogether  die." 

This  frenzy  warmed  him  and  he  returned  to  his  labor 
reassured.  At  length  the  last  of  the  casts  was  made  and 
Clelia 's  little  feet  were  bared  again  from  the  plaster  buskins 


BEAUTY 

Randel  had  built  about  them  with  a  more  perfect  fit  than 
the  most  careful  shoemaker  ever  achieved. 

And  now  it  was  permitted  that  the  girl  should  rest.  She 
had  stood  erect  so  long  that  it  seemed  she  must  be  tired, 
though  she  had  lost  the  pleasant  gift  of  weariness  along 
with  all  the  other  earthly  privileges. 

It  was  fitting  that  the  bride  should  rest  who  had  waited 
so  patiently  for  her  white  robes  to  be  patterned  and  tried 
on.  There  was  no  bed,  no  divan  in  the  studio.  The  only 
long,  level  place  for  her  repose  was  the  pile  of  wood. 

Randel  upheld  her  in  shivering  arms  while  Larrick  flung 
across  the  logs  a  number  of  rugs  and  a  few  old  tapestries 
Randel  had  brought  along  to  hang  upon  the  rough  walls. 
Larrick  spread  a  couch  with  them,  lovingly  as  a  father 
preparing  a  bed  for  his  slain  daughter.  And  there  they 
lifted  and  laid  her. 

She  looked  a  recumbent  marble  effigy  on  a  catafalque. 
They  worshiped  her  sorrowfully  a  moment,  then  drew  the 
covers  over  her  as  if  to  keep  her  warm  and  let  her  sleep  at 
peace. 


CHAPTER  III 

AND  so  at  last  and  at  last  the  work  was  done.  In  the 
far  corner  of  the  cabin  stood  a  huddle  of  plaster  blocks, 
shapeless  themselves,  as  if  a  pile  of  loose  rubble  had  rolled 
from  a  hillside.  Yet  in  them,  strangely  shredded  and 
divided,  was  all  the  form  of  Clelia's  beauty  in  its  mystic 
integrity,  as  the  world  and  the  moons,  the  stars,  the  suns 
and  the  suns  of  suns,  and  many  a  cosmos  made  up  of  lesser 
cosmoi,  and  the  universe  combined  of  countless  interlocking 
universes,  were  all  contained  in  old  Chaos,  who  fathered 
Time  and  Order. 

Rubble  fallen  from  a  hillside  could  be  heaped  into  a  new 
hillside.  The  catastrophes  of  earthquakes  and  the  can- 
nonades of  volcanoes  and  the  slow  squeeze  of  oceanic  pres- 
sure had  built  up  long  sierras,  billowy  foothills,  and  peaks 
where  the  snows  found  an  eternal  home. 

Distance  and  the  blurred  eyes  of  men  called  these  acci- 
dents "landscapes"  and  admired  them,  revered  them, 
loved  and  fought  for  them ;  imagining  intentional  form  where 
there  was  only  fortuity,  seeing  a  god  reclining  on  a  crag, 
finding  his  hammer  mark  in  a  valley,  exacting  an  awe  of 
beauty  from  the  spill  of  a  broken  river  over  a  high  ledge, 
discovering  a  sinuous  nymph  in  a  brook,  a  dryad  in  an  oak. 

Poetry  grew  up  thence,  and  prayer,  superstition  and  altars, 
sacrifice  and  self-sacrifice,  patriotism  and  love  of  home, 
science  and  fabulous  religions,  encyclopedias  and  gram- 
mars, and  the  strange  madnesses  we  call  the  arts. 

Randel  stood  looking  at  the  disarray  of  casts  and,  with  a 
restoring  cigarette  poised  in  his  hand  like  an  added  lean 
and  lighted  ringer,  pointed  to  his  work  and  mused  upon  it. 

"Odd  thing,  Larrick.  Our  dear  little  girl's  beauty  is  all 
there  in  that  litter  of  ugly  chunks.  Her  body  is  like  a 
picture  puzzle  shuffled  up,  but  the  matrices  are  there.  We 


294  BEAUTY 

can  put  it  together  again.  Her  form  is  all  turned  inside 
out  in  the  molds.  Wherever  there  was  convexity  in  her 
pretty  body  there  is  concavity  in  the  mold.  But  the  molds 
will  give  her  back  to  us.  They  will  give  her  back  as  end- 
lessly as  a  mirror  would  give  back  her  reflection.  We 
could  make  a  thousand  statues  of  her.  A  colonnade  of  her 
statues,  an  army  of  caryatids  supporting  a  long,  long  archi- 
trave— all  those  are  there  in  that  pile  of  rubbish.'* 

Almost  unconsciously  they  withdrew  from  the  cabin  and 
closed  the  door  upon  the  deed  that  had  exhausted  them  both, 
a  revolting  obligation  performed  faithfully,  but  with  agony 
and  remorse  at  its  necessity. 

The  sun  was  up  now,  and  its  rays  played  upon  them  with  a 
kindliness  they  needed.  They  felt  hardly  able  to  leave  the 
cabin  with  no  guard  for  Clelia,  and  they  loitered  at  the  door, 
irresolute. 

To  clear  his  heart  of  its  sickness,  Randel  fell  to  shop  talk, 
as  any  man  will  who  seeks  an  escape  from  unbearable  ex- 
perience. Larrick  stood  and  listened  perforce  for  lack  of 
strength  to  move  away. 

"Seeing  those  molds  there,"  Randel  said,  "gave  me  an 
idea  at  least  of  what  the  Cubists  were  trying  to  do.  I 
don't  think  they  quite  understood  it  themselves;  and  I 
never  did  till  now.  The  first  exhibition  of  theirs  I  saw  made 
me  vomit.  I  hurried  home  and  was  seasick — literally. 
But  the  poor  fools  had  an  idea.  It  wasn't  the  idea  of  us 
other  poor  fools,  so  we  spewed  on  it,  as  usual.  But  they 
were  groping,  as  we  all  are. 

"We're  all  blind  men  groping  round  the  elephant  and 
finding  different  things  and  seeing  different  analogies  and 
calling  one  another  liars,  as  we  all  are  and  are  not. 

"I  mean  to  say,  those  blocks  in  there  contain  Clelia 's 
form  all  distorted.  Maybe  the  Cubists  were  trying  to  go 
the  other  way  to  find  beauty.  Where  we  tried  to  express 
the  curve,  they  tried  to  show  the  straight  line  that  sub- 
tended it.  Where  we  tried  to  represent  a  waving  contour, 
they  went  right  to  the  destination  it  meandered  toward. 
Instead  of  blocking  out  the  curves  in  squares  in  order  to 
make  sure  of  the  curves,  as  we  do,  then  rubbing  out  the 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    295 

block  lines,  the  Cubists  used  the  curves  to  find  the  blocks  and 
rubbed  out  the  contour.  They  looked  for  the  strong  square 
that  implies  the  dainty  ripples,  the  big  idea  in  the  pretty. 

"It's  the  details  that  choke  art  to  death.  The  art  of 
painting  a  forest  is  in  omitting  the  leaves.  In  moving 
pictures  they're  using  gauze  screens  and  throwing  things 
out  of  focus  so  as  to  hide  the  distracting,  maddening  details 
that  are  too  many  for  us.  The  Cubists  were  trying  to  do 
that,  too,  maybe. 

"Anyway,  we  have  Clelia  there.  This  is,  indeed,  a  day's 
work." 

Larrick  was  ashamed  to  be  unable  to  grasp  the  foreign 
language  Randel  spoke.  His  life  in  the  desert  had  been  art- 
less almost  altogether.  He  had  read  little  fiction,  seen  few 
plays,  no  paintings  or  architecture  worth  mentioning,  no 
important  music.  He  had  patronized  only  one  art,  and  that 
so  new  an  art  that  most  of  the  critics  were  still  pluming 
themselves  on  despising  it — the  moving  picture.  He  took 
thence  a  little  weapon  in  self-defense  against  Handel's  high 
superiority. 

"There's  a  terrible  trouble,  though,"  lie  interrupted. 
"You  have  Clelia's  form  in  there,  you  say;  but  it  can't 
move.  It's  frozen  fast.  You've  taken  the  ice  from  her 
poor  body,  but  you  can  never  take  it  from  your  statue. 

"So  it  will  never  be  Clelia,  for  Clelia  was  always  on  the 
move.  Never  was  there  anybody  who  was  so  restless  and 
so  limber  and  so —  Why,  she  was  like  quicksilver ! 

"Your  statue  will  show  her  in  one  position  with  her  eyes 
shut  and  her  hands  praying  to  the  beast  that  killed  her. 
But  nobody  ever  saw  Clelia  like  that — except  one  man,  the 
man  we've  got  to  find. 

"  Why  don't  you  make  a  thousand  statues  of  her — running, 
dancing,  diving,  swimming,  riding  a  horse  over  a  stone  fence, 
laughing,  shooting  craps,  poking  fun  at  everybody,  paddling 
a  canoe?  Why  don't  you  make  a  statue  that  can  move? — 
not  a  doll  with  hinges  for  joints,  but  like  Clelia  when  she  was 
Clelia.  Why  don't  you  do  that?  Then  you'd  have  a  real 
monument!  Then  you  could  say  you  really  had  saved 
Clelia's  beauty,  for  half  her  beauty  was  her  speed." 


296  BEAUTY 

Randel  smiled  indulgently.  "I'm  not  God,  my  boy,  and 
I  can't  do  the  impossible." 

"They  said  moving  photographs  were  impossible  once," 
Larrick  persisted.  "Why  doesn't  somebody  invent  statues 
that  move?" 

"Why  not,  indeed?  It  would  be  a  noble  invention.  And 
it  may  come,  who  knows?  But  one  thing  is  sure — if  moving 
statuary  is  ever  devised  the  first  men  who  practice  it  will 
be  treated  by  the  critics  as  if  they  were  the  vilest  scoundrels. 

"The  critics  always  receive  the  pioneer  the  way  the 
Indians  did.  He  comes  to  redeem  the  wilderness  and  make 
the  desert  bloom,  and  he  gets  arrows  and  tomahawks  and 
scalping  knives  for  his  welcome.  It  was  so  with  the  first 
rhymed  poems,  then  the  blank  verse,  the  free  verse,  the  first 
novels,  the  first  unrhymed  plays,  the  first  everything. 
Look  at  your  moving  pictures.  The  critics  who  had  been 
tearing  the  painters  and  sculptors  and  playwrights  and 
authors  to  pieces  for  various  reasons  all  turned  to  rend  the 
moving-picture  makers  for  every  reason,  but  really  for  the 
one  reason  that  the  art  was  new. 

"Take  that  figure  of  Clelia  that  we  have  made.  If  it  is 
ever  exhibited  it  will  be  met  with  a  storm  of  abuse.  Nobody 
will  give  me  any  credit  for  it — or  you,  whose  idea  it  was. 
And  why  not?  First,  because  it  is  unexpected,  therefore 
unpardonable.  Next,  because  I  didn't  do  the  work  free- 
handedly.  What  hopeless  fools  the  critics  are!  Of  course 
we  are  all  critics  and  all  fools.  But  what  poor  damned 
fools  we  all  are,  all  of  us  trying  to  keep  from  admiring  too 
many  things. 

"We  all  think  that  the  less  we  like  the  wiser  we  are! 
The  critic  who  despises  the  most  of  the  works  of  God  and 
man  is  the  one  who  calls  himself  the  most  learned.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  of  course,  he  is  the  least  learned,  the  narrow- 
est, self-denyingest,  blind  fool  of  the  lot.  How  beautiful 
Clelia  was! — is! — how  beautiful  she  shall  be  forever — thanks 
to  us.  And  yet  they  won't  give  her  image  the  name  of  art. 
Art!  What  a  word  of  abuse  and  misuse  and  insanity!" 

He  reverted  to  old  quarrels  with  other  artists  and  critics, 
and  with  the  vanity  of  vanities,  criticism  in  general.  He 


THE   ARTISTS    AND    THE    LAW     297 

was  indifferent  to  the  fact  that  in  criticizing  criticism  he  was 
himself  as  vain  and  sympathetic  as  the  critics  he  reviled. 

But,  as  usual,  it  was  the  fervor  of  love  that  engendered 
hate.  The  fanatic  of  one  school  always  hates  the  fanatic 
of  another,  and  yet  it  is  but  a  jealousy,  a  rivalry  of  lovers 
vaunting  their  beautiful  mistresses.  There  are  so  many 
beautiful  mistresses,  but  they  fade  and  die  and  pass  from 
knowledge  or  praise.  The  great  thing  is  to  save  a  few  of 
the  charms  of  a  few  of  them  from  oblivion  somehow.  The 
big  thing,  the  divine  thing  is  the  permanent  record  of  some 
grace,  no  matter  what  the  dialect,  the  form,  the  medium. 

His  talk  meant  little  to  Larrick,  who  was  blissfully  ignorant 
of  the  caldrons  of  vitriol  that  are  always  bubbling  and 
squeaking  in  the  various  realms  of  art  for  the  blistering  of 
everybody;  vitriol  for  the  conservatives  to  throw  at  the 
radicals;  vitriol  for  the  radicals  to  throw  back;  vitriol  for 
the  realists  and  romanticists  to  exchange ;  vitriol  for  the  new 
school  that  shall  become  old,  to  cast  upon  the  old  that  once 
was  new. 

"The  critics  are  always  wrong,  always  were,  always  will 
be,"  Randel  cried.  "After  all,  why  isn't  this  statue  of 
Clelia  art — a  kind  of  original  work?  Most  of  the  great 
sculptors  have  taken  accurate  and  minute  measurements  of 
their  models  with  tapes  and  calipers  and  merely  transferred 
them  to  the  clay.  Some  eminent  men  have  been  accused  of 
taking  just  such  casts  of  living  models  as  I  am  doing  now. 
They  denied  it,  but  why  shouldn't  they  do  it?  The  best 
of  them  hired  living  models  to  pose  for  them  in  the  exact 
postures,  and  they  had  their  first  clay  drafts  pointed  up  into 
blocks  of  marble  and  brought  close  to  completion  by  hired 
stonecutters.  They  put  the  last  touches  on  them,  of  course, 
but  what  did  that  prove?  Sculpture  is  the  art  of  arts,  yet 
a  sculptor's  studio  is  more  like  a  factory  than  any  other. 

"Sometimes  a  sculptor  amuses  himself  by  carving  a 
statue  out  of  marble — or,  rather,  into  the  marble — with  his 
own  chisels;  but  the  result  isn't  often  of  much  value.  Its 
like  an  improvisation  by  a  pianist  or  a  sketch  by  a  drafts- 
man or  an  after-dinner  speech  by  an  orator.  It  is  only  a 
byplay. 


298  BEAUTY 

"What  poppycock  it  is,  anyway,  to  make  so  much  fuss 
about  how  or  where  an  artist  gets  his  results.  The  results 
are  what  count.  Shakespeare  used  old  plays  or  best-seller 
novels  for  his  immortal  works.  Dickens  used  people  he 
saw  in  the  street  and  phrases  he  overheard  in  the  street. 
I  was  reading  that  Poe  had  half  a  dozen  friends  help  him 
compile  'The  Raven,'  and  that  is  poetry  if  ever  there  was 
poetry.  Moli&re  said,  '  Je  prends  mon  bien  oil  je  le  trouve,' 
and  he  certainly  was  an  artist.  The  work's  the  thing;  the 
process  is  nobody's  business.  Old  prudes  thought  they  had 
destroyed  a  man's  claim  to  genius  if  they  could  hint  that 
he  had  used  a  camera.  Well,  what  if  he  did?  The  only 
crime  is  in  letting  the  critics  scare  you  out  of  getting  the 
best  result. 

"The  one  great  thing  is  that  we  have  given  to  the  world 
a  perfect  form  in  its  perfection,  truth  in  its  truth.  What 
does  it  matter  whether  they  call  us  artists  or  molders  or 
vandals?  Then  we  must  always  remember  that  sculpture 
itself  was  once  an  accu~sed  and  forbidden  art.  The  human 
form  being  in  God's  likeness  was  not  to  be  made  into  images. 
For  several  hundred  years  it  was  against  the  Christian  law. 

'"Vandals'  is  the  word  a  lot  of  good  people  will  call  us 
when  they  find  out  what  we  have  done.  Clelia's  mother 
and  father  will  want  to  kill  me,  probably,  as  an  obscene 
monster. 

"Perhaps  it  would  be  wiser  not  to  tell  anyone  what  we 
have  done  until  the  time  is  ripe.  As  I  said  before,  it  may 
be  a  prison  offense.  A  thousand  detectives,  though,  might 
look  at  those  molds  and  never  suspect  what  they  contain. 
Still,  for  the  present,  I  think  we  had  best  not  mention  the 
matter." 

Larrick  said:  "If  there's  any  trouble  I'll  take  the  blame. 
It  was  my  idea." 

Randel  put  his  hand  on  Larrick's  shoulder.  "That's  like 
you,  to  claim  nothing  but  the  penalty.  But  the  blame  must 
go  with  the  glory.  The  demand  was  yours,  but  I  supplied 
it.  After  all,  what  have  we  stolen  but  the  impress  of 
Clelia's  form? 

"And   what   is   form?    What   is   anything   without   it? 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW     299 

We  have  taken  Clelia's  form  and  left  it  with  her.  We  have 
robbed  nobody,  yet  we  have  enriched  the  world.  I'd  be 
glad  to  go  to  jail  for  such  a  divine  crime.  The  judge  could 
only  sentence  me  to  immortality,  and  what  wouldn't  I 
sacrifice  for  that?  Still,  we'd  best  keep  our  secret  while 
we  may." 

The  roving  discourse  had  rested  them  somewhat  from 
raw  fact.  They  were  exhausted  with  theory  and  were  drawn 
irresistibly  back  to  the  cabin. 

And  now  Clelia  lay  before  them,  no  longer  a  splendor  of 
grace  in  a  shroud  of  glass,  but  a  poor  little  girl  that  was  no 
longer  to  be  spoken  to  or  listened  to.  She  was  there  before 
them,  yet  she  was  inconceivably  absent. 

Larrick  clutched  at  Handel's  shoulder  for  support  and 
cried: 

"I  can't  have  her  dead,  Randel.    I  won't  have  Clelia 
dead.     I  don't  want  to  live  in  a  world  where  so  sweet  a 
flower  can  be  so — "     As  his  grief  throttled  him  the  door 
opened  and  Nancy  Fleet  stepped  in. 
20 


CHAPTER  IV 

T  ARRICK  had  been  so  absorbed  in  the  thought  of  wom- 
J-/  anly  form  in  ice  or  marble  immobile  eternally  that 
his  first  surprise  when  Nancy  Fleet  appeared,  quick,  anxious, 
alert,  was  at  the  miracle  of  her  being  alive  at  all,  being  able 
to  move,  step,  speak,  lift  her  hand,  her  eyelids,  be  curious 
about  anything  human. 

He  had  almost  come  to  think  in  these  few  hours  in  this 
lonely,  snow-smothered  camp  that  womankind  had  ended 
with  Clelia.  Yet  another  woman  stood  on  the  threshold, 
as  keen  and  beautiful  and  capable  of  joy  and  pain  as  if 
Clelia  had  never  died.  Life  was  going  on,  people  were 
going  about  in  spite  of  this  tragedy  that  ought  to  have 
stopped  the  world. 

Larrick  had  a  flash  of  untimely  memory:  once  when  a 
great  railroad  official  had  died  all  the  trains  on  his  road 
stopped  for  one  minute  during  the  funeral  ceremony.  Lar- 
rick had  been  riding  on  one  of  the  trains.  He  remembered 
the  strange  mood  of  that  moment's  pause  because  a  suc- 
cessful magnate  was  dead.  It  seemed  to  him  now  that  the 
people  of  all  the  world  ought  to  pay  at  least  a  thought  to  the 
honor  of  the  passing  of  a  beautiful  girl  who  had  never  been  a 
wife  or  a  mother,  had  never  given  origin  to  that  innumerable 
posterity  every  woman  holds  enwombed  within  her.  If 
she  had  lived  she  would  have  given  life  to  far  more  souls 
than  any  magnate  ever  gave  a  livelihood  to.  But  there 
would  be  few  to  know  that  she  had  gone,  or  to  care. 

Nancy  Fleet,  peering  into  the  cabin,  was  a  little  blinded 
from  the  glitter  of  the  snow  outside,  and  saw  only  the  two 
men  standing  together.  She  gasped,  "Did  you  know  that 
Clelia  had  vanished?" 

"Yes,"  said  Randel.     "We  brought  her  here." 

"Thank  God!"  Nancy  gasped, and, slipping  into  the  cabin, 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    301 

dropped  to  the  first  chair.  "I  slept  like  a  log  all  night,  I'm 
ashamed  to  say.  When  I  woke  up  I  felt  a  criminal.  I 
dressed  as  fast  as  I  could  and  hurried  out.  I  almost  fainted 
when  I  saw  the  ice  shaft  gone.  I  traced  it  here  by  the  marks 
in  the  snow  and  I  traced  the  footprints  here,  and —  But 
where  is  it  now?" 

Her  scurrying  glance  made  out  the  disorder,  the  plaster 
dust,  the  bits  of  ice  about  the  floor,  the  white  streaks  on 
Randel's  boots  and  clothes.  She  caught  the  shadow  of  guilt 
in  the  manners  of  both  men,  and  she  leaped  to  her  feet  with 
an  instinct  of  horror,  gasping: 

"What  in  God's  name  have  you  done  with  Clelia?" 

Randel  saw  that  the  secret  was  already  at  the  mercy  of  the 
first  comer.  He  frowned  and  pointed  to  the  figure  shrouded 
on  the  wood. 

Nancy  took  a  step  forward,  then  fell  back  and  confronted 
Randel  again : 

"You've  taken  the  ice  from  her!  But  how  did  you  dare? 
And  all  this  plaster,  this — those  things  on  the  floor.  They're 
molds,  aren't  they?  Randel!  You  haven't —  You  didn't — 
You  did —  You  would —  You're  merciless  in  your  art.  And 
Mr.  Larrick  helped  you.  Why  did  you  drag  him  into  this — 
this  blasphemy?" 

Randel  wavered  for  a  reply  between  shame  and  pride, 
but  Larrick  broke  in: 

"  It  was  my  idea,  Nancy.     Mr.  Randel  only  carried  it  out." 

There  was  a  womanly,  almost  a  motherly,  fanaticism  in 
Nancy's  panic  for  Larrick's  welfare. 

"But  what  on  earth  were  you  thinking  of?  The  risk  you 
ran  is  frightful.  The  police  will  ask  what  you  were  trying 
to  conceal.  They  are  coming  now.  I  saw  from  the  porch 
on  the  mountain  road  Jeffers's  sleigh  and  two  or  three  others 
breaking  their  way  through  the  snow.  They'll  be  here  in  a 
few  minutes,  and  they'll  ask  a  thousand  questions.  Oh, 
why — oh,  why  couldn't  you  have  let  her  alone?" 

Larrick,  marveling  at  Nancy's  concern  for  him,  felt  it 
cruelly  impossible  to  tell  her  that  he  had  been  infatuated 
with  Clelia's  beauty  and  that  he  preferred  any  profanation 
to  its  loss.  He  could  not  bludgeon  her  so. 


3o2  BEAUTY 

And  now  Randel  came  to  his  rescue.  He  took  Nancy's 
hands  in  his  and  said : 

"Larrick's  only  share  of  the  blame  is  this:  he  said  yester- 
day that  it  seemed  a  pity  there  was  no  portrait  of  Clelia. 
She  was  like  a  statue,  and  he  thought  there  ought  to  be  a 
statue  of  her.  I  worried  about  it  nearly  all  night,  and  this 
morning  I  woke  him  and  asked  him  to  help  me  take  a  cast  of 
her  pretty  body.  That  is  what  we  have  done." 

Nancy  shuddered.  "Oh,  I  .can  understand  you.  You 
would  sacrifice  anything  to  your  sculpture.  But  you 
hadn't  Clelia's  consent,  or  her  father's,  or  Mrs.  Roantree's, 
or  the  law's  consent.  It  would  have  been  terrible  enough 
if  Clelia  had  simply  died,  but  the  poor  child  belongs  to  the 
police  now.  And  what  won't  they  imagine?  And  the 
newspapers, what  won't  they  do  with  it?  They'll  make  you 
famous  at  last,  Randel!" 

"Infamous,"  he  groaned.  "But  art  has  its  martyrs  no 
less  than  religion,  Nancy.  Painters  and  sculptors  and  play- 
wrights and  novelists  have  been  persecuted  and  jailed  and 
covered  with  shame  when  they  were  simply  letting  their 
light  shine  in  the  dark  world.  It  was  always  so,  and  I'll 
take  my  medicine,  whatever  it  is.  My  heart  is  as  pure  as 
Savonarola's  or  Saint  Cecilia's,  and  my  religion  as  sincere. 
But  at  all  costs  we  must  not  let  the  law  rob  us  of  this  work 
of  art.  Clelia's  body  belongs  to  her  parents  and  to  the  law 
and  then  to  the  grave,  but  her  beauty  belongs  to  the  ages, 
and  I  thank  God  we've  saved  it.  I  count  on  you  to  help 
us." 

Nancy  nodded.  ' '  You're  dragging  me  in  as  an  accomplice. 
Oh,  well,  I  always  was  a  fool.  I'll  do  what  I  can."  She 
turned  on  Larrick  a  look  of  meek  understanding  and 
humility  before  Clelia's  power  over  him.  Then  she  set 
her  wits  to  work  on  a  conspiracy  against  the  curiosity  of  the 
world.  As  she  meditated  fiercely  Randel  said : 

"Perhaps  we'd  better  take  Clelia  back  to  the  house." 

"No,"  said  Nancy,  "they'd  trace  the  marks  of  the 
dragging  of  the  ice  here,  and  your  footprints,  as  I  did. 
Let's  take  the  plaster  molds  and  hide  them  somewhere — in 
the  snow,  perhaps." 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    303 

Randel  shook  his  head.  "No,  they're  still  wet;  they'd 
freeze  and  crack  and  be  distorted." 

"Then  take  them  to  my  room  and  cover  them  with 
blankets,"  Nancy  said.  "We  must  hurry  before  Mrs. 
Roantree  comes  out." 

And  this  they  did.  Nancy's  room  was  in  a  corner  at  a 
distance  from  Mrs.  Roantree's.  They  carried  the  casts  to 
her  window  and  she  lifted  them  in  and  piled  them  in  a 
closet. 

They  had  made  the  last  of  the  journeys  just  before 
Jeffers  and  his  convoy  drove  in,  their  faces  and  clothes  snow 
matted  by  the  long,  plunging  combat  with  the  snow-filled 
roads.  •  — .,.-.  -  .  . 

In  fact,  Nancy  had  been  inspired  to  set  Berthe,  the  maid, 
to  the  task  of  preparing  a  great  quantity  of  coffee.  And  she 
herself  was  buttering  biscuits  and  preparing  the  best  break- 
fast she  could  from  such  supplies  as  had  been  stored  in  the 
larder. 

The  invaders  from  the  other  side  of  the  storm  were  so 
needful  of  coffee  that  they  regarded  the  household  with  the 
kindliest  prejudice.  And  when  Mrs.  Roantree  appeared 
like  a  belated  queen  to  take  command,  and  brought  forth  a 
supply  of  whisky,  the  sheriff  and  his  company  felt  rather 
like  waifs  rescued  than  like  avenging  officers. 

Besides,  Jeffers  and  Kemp  had  told  them  enough  to  relieve 
anyone  in  the  camp  of  suspicion.  Jeffers  had  not  meant  to 
bring  along  so  many  outsiders.  But,  as  he  explained  to 
Mrs\  Roantree,  the  station  agent,  who  took  and  sent  the 
telegrams  Mrs.  Roantree  had  written  to  apprise  Clelia's 
mother  and  father  of  the  tragedy,  had  said  that  the  sheriff 
must  be  told.  The  undertaker,  whom  Jeffers  visited  for  the 
coffin,  would  not  keep  the  secret. 

Before  Jeffers  could  get  out  of  the  village  the  sheriff  had 
stopped  him.  And  the  local  newspaper  man,  correspondent 
of  a  press  bureau,  had  listened  to  all  the  sheriff's  questions 
and  Jeffers'  answers.  This  man  had  hastened  to  send  a 
long  dispatch  to  the  newspapers. 

Clelia's  name  was  now,  no  doubt,  being  set  up  in  the 
biggest  type  in  thousands  of  offices.  Her  story  regarbed  in 


3o4  BEAUTY 

every  version  was  no  doubt  being  sold  to  millions  of  eager 
shoppers  for  sensation. 

Mrs.  Roantree  turned  on  the  newspaper  correspondent, 
Ira  Madsen,  in  a  fury  of  horror.  The  young  man  had 
hitherto  been  known  to  her  as  a  village  news-terrier,  very 
grateful  for  any  crumbs,  or  "society  items,"  as  he  called 
them,  that  she  would  brush  from  her  table  about  her  dis- 
tinguished visitors.  But  now  he  had  a  dignity  of  a  new  sort. 

He  answered  her  without  homage.  The  reporter  is  the  one 
autocrat  left  who  fears  no  one  and  is  feared  by  everyone.  He 
spoke  of  his  duty. 

And  indeed  he  had  his  own  religion,  the  news.  He  was  as 
sincere  in  it  and  as  ruthless  as  the  priest  of  any  other  cult. 
He  put  Mrs.  Roantree  in  her  place  in  a  few  words  whose 
insolence  stunned  her. 

Sheriff  Brummit  rebuked  Madsen.  'The  sheriff  kept  a 
store  in  the  village  and  needed  Mrs.  Roantree's  trade. 
Sheriff  Brummit  thundered  with  all  his  thunder:  "Look-a- 
here,  young  feller,  who  d'  you  think  you're  talking  to?  I'd 
have  you  know — " 

But  the  reporter  was  not  even  afraid  of  the  police.  The 
police  fear  the  reporter  nowadays  above  ail  powers  of 
darkness,  for  every  reporter  feels  hinaself  ex  officio  a  detective 
and  has  a  horde  of  readers  at  his  back.  Madsen  gave  the 
sheriff  thunder  for  thunder. 

"I'd  have  you  know  that  I  represent  the  newspaper  read- 
ers of  America,  and  they've  got  a  right  to  have  the  truth, 
no  matter  who  it  hurts.  The  bigger  they  are  the  harder 
they  fall,  and  that  goes  for  sheriffs  and  society  leaders." 

Mrs.  Roantree's  eyes  flashed.  She  began,  "Well,  of  all 
the  imp — " 

But  Nancy  Fleet  led  her  aside,  begging  her  not  to  waste 
her  strength  on  such  whippersnappers,  and  got  her  to  her 
room.  Then  she  returned  and  invited  questions  of  every 
sort,  melting  Archimedes  with  such  a  smile  that  his  terrible 
lever  turned  to  a  liquorice  stick. 

She  answered  questions  before  they  could  be  asked,  and 
in  her  own  way.  Larrick  was  amazed  by  her  darting  in- 
genuity. She  parried  a  dangerous  blow  before  it  could  be 


THE    ARTISTS    AND    THE    LAW    305 

started  and  diverted  suspicion  to  a  harmless  byway  before 
it  could  interest  itself  in  any  dangerous  path. 

Nancy  told  of  Clelia's  disappearance,  the  hunt  for  her,  of 
her  own  return  from  the  station  (she  fumbled  her  motives  a 
little  here),  the  wild  anxiety  of  everyone.  She  told  of 
Mr.  Larrick's  excursions  into  the  blizzard,  of  how  she  her- 
self had  happened  to  save  him  when  he  was  lost,  of  Mr. 
Larrick's  final  discovery  of  Clelia  frozen  in  the  lake,  of  the 
removal  of  the  ice  block,  and  of  the  dispatch  of  Jeffers  to  town 
with  messages. 

All  this  Jeffers  and  Kemp  had  already  told.  But  they 
had  also  said  that  Clelia's  body  would  be  found  in  the  ice. 

The  sheriff  and  the  reporter  were  more  interested  in 
learning  why  it  had  been  removed.  While  Randel  and 
Larrick  faltered,  Nancy  took  refuge  from  wisdom  in 
emotion : 

"We  just  couldn't  stand  it!  She  was  so  sweet,  so  darling. 
It  was  unbearable  that  the  pretty  child  should  be  left  there 
any  longer !  So  we  took  the  ice  from  her. " 

"Where  is  she  now?" 

"In  Mr.  Randel's  cabin." 

"We'll  go  there,"  said  the  reporter  before  the  sheriff  could 
say  it. 

Randel  explained,  and  the  marks  in  the  snow  confirmed, 
the  difficulty  of  carrying  the  ice,  the  fall,  and  the  partial  break- 
ing, and  the  care  with  which  he  and  Larrick  had  lifted  the 
fragments  away. 

When  they  entered  the  cabin  the  still  presence  of  the  figure 
in  the  gay  tapestries  silenced  them  a  moment.  The  reporter 
hurried  forward  to  lift  the  shroud.  The  sheriff  stopped  him 
and  flung  him  back. 

"Just  a  minute,  Mr.  Madsen.     This  is  my  job,  I  guess." 

He  drew  down  the  cloth  grimly  and  fell  back  before  the 
white  face  and  the  hands  in  prayer.  He  was  a  father  himself 
and  he  winced  at  the  scar  in  the  girl's  brow.  He  was  a 
father  and  he  felt  no  inclination  to  expose  the  girl  to  closer 
examination.  But  the  reporter,  on  tiptoe,  peering  over  the 
sheriff's  shoulder,  kept  asking  questions  and  trying  to  drag 
the  covering  off.  Larrick  would  have  knocked  him  down 


3o6  BEAUTY 

if  Nancy  had  not  seized  his  hand  and  led  him  to  the  door, 
thrust  him  out,  and  begged  him  to  keep  away. 

Sheriff  Brummit  ordered  Madsen  not  to  touch  Clelia  and 
threatened  to  arrest  him  if  he  did.  So  Madsen  turned  his 
attention  to  the  cabin.  He  noted  the  blotches  of  plaster 
and  asked  about  them. 

Nancy  was  glib  with  explanation : 

"Mr.  Randel  is  a  famous  sculptor.  This  is  his  studio. 
He  was  working  on  some  statuary.  He  brought — we  brought 
— her  here,  because  it  seemed  better  than  the  house — a  better 
place  for  Mr.  Hingeley,"  (Mr.  Hingeley  was  the  undertaker) 
"  to  prepare  the  poor  child  for — for —  Mrs.  Roan  tree  is 
really  at  the  breaking  point." 

"  I  understand,  ma'am,"  said  the  sheriff,  and  Mr.  Hingeley 
bowed  ponderously. 

The  correspondent,  however,  interposed  a  barrier:  "But 
nothing  must  be  done  before  a  careful  examination  of  the — 
the — before  a  careful  examination.  There  may  have  to  be 
chemical  and  microscopic  tests,  and  probably  the  poor  young 
lady's  father  will  insist  on  some  of  the  great  New  York 
detectives  studying  the  case  for  clews." 

Nancy  winced.  She  was  hard  put  to  it  to  keep  from 
screaming  what  she  murmured:  "Speaking  of  clews,  Mr. 
Sheriff,  don't  you  think  you  ought  to  see  where  the  body  was 
found?" 

"That's  a  good  idea.  I  was  thinking  of  that,"  said 
Mr.  Brummit,  and  moved  to  the  door. 

Madsen  was  torn  between  a  desire  to  be  left  alone  with 
the  "mystery"  and  a  fear  that  the  sheriff  might  find  some 
clew  at  the  lake's  edge  and  not  tell  him  of  it.  The  jealousy 
between  the  two  branches  of  modern  government,  the  law 
and  the  newspaper,  is  increasingly  bitter. 

"We  ought  to  leave  somebody  on  guard  here,"  said 
Madsen,  and  Brummit  agreed  with  him  for  once. 

"That's  a  good  idea.  I  was  just  thinking  of  it.  You 
stay,  Hingeley." 

The  undertaker  was  willing.  He  was  a  man  of  heavy 
make  and  no  fancier  of  slippery  paths  or  cold  weather. 
He  was  a  practicer  of  a  necessary  and  necessarily  somber 


THE    ARTISTS    AND    THE   LAW    307 

art.  When  nobody  died,  he  was  idle  and  in  business  de- 
pression. When  he  was  busy,  there  was  sorrow  all  about 
him  and  he  could  not  rejoice  in  his  prosperity.  His  strange 
and  lugubrious  craft  lacked  all  the  rescuing  elements  that 
brighten  the  physician's  career,  and  yet  he  found,  perforce, 
a  good  deal  of  cheer  in  life.  He  filled  his  leisure  with  con- 
viviality. He  told  a  good  story  and  he  sang  funny  songs 
in  a  fat  tenor  voice.  And  his  favorite  reading  was  the 
comic  supplements  in  which  a  number  of  famous  characters 
suffered  burlesque  agonies  day  after  day. 

Brummit  put  him  in  charge  and  gave  him  the  highly 
needless  caution  not  to  touch  "anything."  Hingeley 
murmured  that  he  was  "in  no  hurry."  And  before  the 
others  were  out  of  the  cabin  he  had  pulled  up  a  chair,  fetched 
from  his  pockets  a  cigar  and  a  match  box  and  a  bundle  of 
comic  supplements,  and  was  smiling  already  through  the 
flame  of  his  match  at  the  daily  picture  of  Mr.  and  Mrs- 
Gump  exchanging  repartee  across  his  lap. 

Nancy,  clutching  her  furs  about  her,  clung  to  Larrick's 
arm  and  to  Randel's,  forcing  them  against  their  will  to  come 
along.  Brummit  and  Madsen,  Jeffers  and  the  chauffeur, 
followed  across  the  snow,  under  the  pines  and  down  a  slope 
crusted  with  sparkling  ice  until  all  the  world  seemed  to  be 
covered  with  cake  frosting.  Burnley,  the  painter,  who  had 
only  now  come  out,  joined  the  company. 

A  light  and  humorous  breeze  scampered  across  the  bliz- 
zard's battlefield  and  played  top  with  a  few  dead  leaves  that 
it  tore  from  the  snow.  Among  the  rusty  spinners  Larrick 
noted  something  bright  and  blue  and  crimson.  It  might  be 
an  orchid  or  a  huge  butterfly. 

The  breeze  ran  with  it,  checked  and  spun  it,  skirled  it  and 
whipped  it  along.  Larrick  ran  forward  and  bent  like  a  short- 
stop picking  up  a  grounder.  When  he  lifted  his  hand  he 
found  in  it  a  little  silken  slipper,  heelless,  brilliant,  soft  in 
spite  of  the  cold. 

His  heart  rocked  with  pain.  He  was  afraid  to  speak  or  to 
think.  He  brought  it  to  Nancy,  holding  it  out  without 
speaking.  She  glanced  at  it  and  nodded,  groaning: 

"  It's  one  of  Clelia's  bedroom  slippers."     And  she  explained 


3o8  BEAUTY 

to  the  sheriff,  "She  had  them  on  when  she  left  her  room,  for 
this  is  the  only  one  that  has  been  found." 

Madsen  thrust  out  for  it,  but  Larrick  gave  him  the  heel 
of  his  hand  in  the  chest  and  almost  flung  him  over.  They 
stood  and  regarded  it  dumbly.  It  was  like  the  sandal  of  a 
slain  goddess.  It  was  an  emblem  of  Clelia's  own  light, 
scampering  soul. 

They  moved  on,  saddened,  and  all  of  them  watching  for  the 
other  slipper.  They  expected  to  see  it  running  across  the 
snow  as  its  mate  had  done.  But  when  they  found  it  at  last 
it  was  caught  in  a  little  bush  at  the  foot  of  the  rock  by  the 
great  tree  where  Larrick  had  found  Clelia  in  the  lake.  He 
held  the  two  slippers  in  his  hand  against  his  heart  while 
they  paused  and  considered  the  bleak  region. 

The  glare  of  shore  and  lake,  the  shiver  in  the  pine  needles, 
the  absence  of  everything  warm  and  gracious,  gave  the  little 
red  and  blue  patterns  of  Chinese  silk  a  strangely  incon- 
gruous grace. 

It  was  hard  to  believe  that  not  many  days  had  passed 
since  the  lake  and  the  banks  were  filled  with  balm  and  with 
tender  warmth.  There  before  them,  easily  discernible  in 
the  older  ice,  was  the  new  ice  that  had  filled  the  place  of  the 
block  Jeffers  had  cut  out  and  hauled  ashore  with  oxen. 

The  sheriff's  theory  was  that  Miss  Clelia  had  been  dragged 
here,  beaten  to  death,  and  flung  off  the  rock  into  the  deep 
water.  The  newspaper  man  felt  that  she  had  rather  been 
lured.  In  the  first  place,  if  she  had  been  dragged  her  slippers 
would  have  been  torn  off  near  the  house  and  would  show 
signs  of  struggle.  In  the  second  place,  he  dearly  loved  the 
word  "lured." 

The  sheriff  growled,  "How  could  anybody  loor  a  nice 
young  lady  like  she  was  out  here  in  her  nightgown?" 

"Well,  she  was  out  here,  wasn't  she?"  Madsen  demanded. 
"She  came  out  here,  didn't  she?  J  tell  you  she  was  loored." 

Brummit  had  to  admit  that  Clelia  had  left  the  house  in 
her  nightgown  and  that  was  as  hard  for  his  village  mind 
to  explain  as  the  motive  any  man  should  have  for  destroying 
so  pretty  a  thing,  once  she  had  come  there. 

This  was  easy  for  Madsen.     The  newspapers  were  always 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    309 

printing  stories  of  beasts  in  human  shape  who  tormented 
pretty  girls  to  death.  He  said: 

"Some  fiend  got  her.  He  might  have  been  a  dope  fiend 
or  a  black  devil.  We'll  have  to  examine  the  body  to  see  if 
there  are  any  marks  of  violence." 

Nancy  Fleet  checked  Larrick's  desire  to  put  marks  of 
violence  on  the  man  whose  profession  was  inquisitiveness. 
She  said: 

"We  all  saw  Clelia  plainly  through  the  ice,  Mr.  Madsen. 
There  were  no  marks  upon  her  except  the  cut  in  her  forehead. 
Her  pretty  feet  were  bare  and  unbruised.  Her  hands  were 
clasped  in  prayer  and  they  were  not  bruised." 

Madsen  would  not  be  denied:  "Then  we  ought  to  have  a. 
physician  examine  her  to  see  if  the  fiend — " 

He  caught  the  look  of  a  fiend  in  Larrick's  eyes  and  did  not 
finish  his  sentence. 

They  stood  baffled,  each  thinking  according  to  the  ma- 
chinery of  his  soul.  Larrick  was  musing  sullenly  upon  the 
paradox:  if  it  could  be  proved  that  a  man  had  wrought 
upon  this  girl  the  evil  this  man  hinted,  no  punishment  would 
be  thought  cruel  enough  for  him.  Men  would  think  that  in 
lynching  him  they  had  only  absolved  themselves  and  their 
community  and  humanity  from  the  stain  of  his  unworthiness 
to  exist  among  humanity.  And  yet  the  God  that  Clelia 
seemed  to  be  praying  to  must  have  permitted  the  fiend  to 
exercise  the  deviltry  that  God  permitted  to  enter  the  world. 
To  revere  an  all-wise,  all-merciful  Deity  for  permitting  what 
was  considered  degrading  for  a  man  to  do  was  strange.  As 
Larrick  put  it  to  himself, "  Folks  must  have  got  God  all  wrong 
somehow."  But  he  had  not  fathomed  the  how  of  it  when  the 
sheriff  turned  away  from*  the  misty  emptiness  of  speculation 
to  regain  the  cabin  where  the  empty  shell  of  Clelia  slept. 

As  they  all  moved  slowly  up  a  slant  of  the  glassy  declivity 
Larrick  remembered  Hingeley  and  foresaw  with  a  nausea  of 
revulsion  all  the  further  treatment  that  awaited  the  poor  girl. 

He  wrung  his  hands  in  anguish  and  cast  his  eyes  upward 
in  a  protest  to  Heaven.  His  eyes  caught  a  black  wing  of 
smoke  fluttering  above  the  pines.  Then  he  saw  the  red 
plumage  of  lofty  flames  leaping  into  the  black. 


CHAPTER  V 

others  saw  at  the  same  moment  and  set  forward  with 
1  cries  of  alarm.  They  slipped,  fell,  scrambled  up,  fell 
again,  and  made  sorry  progress. 

One  of  the  cluster  of  buildings  was  plainly  on  fire.  The 
trees  and  the  round  hillocks  concealed  from  them  which 
one  it  was.  As  they  ran  stumbling,  skating,  and  sprawling, 
one  headland  and  another  disclosed  this  building  and  that 
standing  dark  and  unharmed. 

They  all  guessed  that  it  was  Randel's  cabin  and  he  was 
filled  with  dread  of  the  suspicion  that  might  attach  to  him. 
He  thanked  his  stars  that  Nancy  had  compelled  him  to  be 
with  the  sheriff  and  Madsen. 

They  had  not  yet  come  in  full  view  of  his  cabin  when 
Hingeley  appeared,  shouting,  "Fire!"  and  floundering  across 
the  snow.  He  was  so  excited  that  before  he  realized  it  he 
had  assumed  the  entire  blame,  talking  pantingly  as  he 
turned  back  with  the  sheriff. 

"I  was  settin'  there  waitin'  for  you.  I'd  finished  the 
papers  and  I  was  kind  of  dozin'  off.  'Ain't  had  much  sleep 
recent,  and  we  left  the  village  so  early  and  all.  But  I  shook 
m'self  awake  like  and  lit  my  cigar  again.  It  had  went  out. 
I'd  'a'  swore  I  blowed  out  the  match  before  I  dropped  it, 
but  all  of  a  suddent  the  noospapers  blazed  up  and  I  like  to 
got  set  on  fire  m'self.  I  jumped  up  and  tried  to  tromple  the 
fire  out,  but  it  kept  ketchin'  on  the  papers  and  things.  I 
run  out  the  door  lookin'  for  a  pail  or  somethin',  but  couldn't 
find  one.  I  throwed  armfuls  of  snow  inside  the  door,  but 
the  blaze  was  somethin'  tumble.  That  pine's  chock  full  of 
rosum,  you  know.  The  smoke  come  rollin'  out  so's  't  I  like 
to  smothered.  I'm  awful  sorry,  but — " 

The  sheriff  did  not  waste  profanity  on  him.  He  lurched 
forward,  crackling  through  the  snow,  the  others  with  him 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    3n 

except  Jeffers,  who  set  off  for  the  shed  where  he  kept  a  reel 
of  hose  all  ready  against  just  such  an  emergency.  As  he 
ran  he  called  back  to  the  chauffeur  to  fetch  the  fire  extin- 
guishers out  of  the  Big  House. 

Suddenly,  as  the  others  ran,  a  screen  of  snow  and  pines 
seemed  to  withdraw  and  disclose  the  expected  picture. 

In  the  surrounding  frame  of  black-green  pines  the  cabin 
was  all  one  blaze  like  a  huge  fireplace.  The  flames  were 
singing  aloft  with  a  symphonic  harmony,  an  allegro  of  re- 
joicing, a  festival  of  scarlets,  crimsons,  yellows,  and  whites. 
Sparks  went  up  in  tinsel  confetti,  and  the  smoke  was  a  vast 
black  shawl  flaunting  among  the  pines. 

The  trees  about  the  cabin  were  catching  and  long  pen- 
nants of  red  flung  up  from  the  long  pendants  of  green. 

Larrick  thought  only  of  rescuing  Clelia,  and  he  drove  for- 
ward, breaking  through  the  ice  as  if  wading  through  a 
greenhouse.  He  would  have  darted  into  the  very  core  of  the 
furnace,  but  Nancy,  running  lightly  across  the  surface  that 
yielded  and  checked  him,  overtook  him  and  wrapped  her 
arms  about  him,  screaming  to  him  above  the  surf  roar  of  the 
flames  wild  pleas  against  his  madness. 

He  tore  her  hands  free,  but  she  gripped  him  again.  She 
only  halted  him  when  she  made  him  understand  her  desperate 
threat : 

"If  you  go  in  there  to  die  you've  got  to  take  me  with 
you." 

This  held  him  back.  Indeed,  the  thought  of  her  made 
him  conscious  of  the  blistering  heat  that  was  scorching  his 
face  and  hands  and  hers.  As  he  stood  irresolute,  a  tree  that 
had  grown  against  the  very  wall  of  the  cabin,  and  was  now  a 
tremendous  plume  of  fire,  came  over  crackling  and  crashed 
about  them  with  a  thud  and  a  swish  of  flame. 

He  had  enough  to  do  to  drag  Nancy  through  the  gauntlet 
of  clutching  hot  ringers,  and  the  blast  of  heated  air  almost 
suffocated  him  before  he  carried  her  out  of  danger  and 
dropped  to  his  knees  on  the  snow,  carrying  her  backward  in  a 
swoon. 

The  immediate  need  of  the  living  drove  from  his  mind 
for  a  moment  the  useless  help  he  would  have  rendered  to 


3i2  BEAUTY 

Clelia,  and  he  dashed  snow  in  Nancy's  face  and  chafed  her 
hands  until  he  had  her  eyes  open  again. 

But  she  fastened  upon  him  and  would  not  let  him  go. 
When  Jeffers  came  running  up  with  the  line  of  hose,  aided 
by  the  other  men,  still  she  would  not  release  him. 

He  hardly  forgave  her  even  when  Jeffers  yelled  that  the 
water  pipes  were  frozen.  The  men  ran  back  to  the  Big 
House  for  fire  extinguishers,  but  by  the  time  the  chauffeur 
arrived  with  the  first  of  the  brass  cylinders  the  very  trees 
about  the  cabin  were  afire  and  spread  a  red  barrier  against 
approach. 

The  first  extinguisher  barely  quenched  the  flames  on  the 
nearest  tree  before  it  was  exhausted.  And  then  the  tree 
blazed  up  again. 

Randel  came  limping  up  with  a  cylinder  on  his  back  and 
fell  gasping  at  Nancy's  side.  It  was  useless  to  waste  on  the 
trees  about  the  cabin  the  fire-quelling  liquids  that  might  be 
needed  to  save  the  rest  of  the  buildings. 

There  was  nothing  to  do  but  sit  and  watch.  All  the  men 
lounged  about  in  idleness  before  the  frantic  revelry  of  the  fire. 
Mrs.  Roantree  and  Berthe  stood  on  the  porch  of  the  Big 
House,  wringing  their  hands  no  more  vainly. 

Finally  the  roof  collapsed  and  a  new  fierceness  possessed 
the  heart  of  the  oven. 

Larrick's  body  shook  as  if  the  weight  had  fallen  upon  him- 
self. Randel,  however,  found  something  to  be  glad  of  even 
in  that  horror. 

"It's  the  best  thing,  old  man,"  he  mumbled.  "Think 
what  it  will  save  that  dainty  body  from  enduring  further. 
The  logs  she  rested  on  will  be  like  a  funeral  pyre.  She  is 
ashes,  and  there  is  nothing  more  for  her  to  suffer.  God  love 
her  bright  soul!" 

Larrick  refused  comfort  at  such  a  time. 

"But  her  beautiful  body — and  the  proof  of  the  crime." 

Randel  almost  laughed  as  he  groaned: 

"We  have  all  the  proof  there  is  in  those  plaster  molds  we 
took,  thank  God.  And  all  her  beauty  is  there,  too — all  of 
it  that  could  live." 


CHAPTER  VI 

'"PHE  silence  of  the  desert  it  may  have  been  that  robbed 
1  Larrick's  tongue  of  facility. 

At  all  times  the  desert  is  rumorous  with  tiny  commotions, 
whisperings,  and  rustlings  of  sand  and  sage  and  creeping 
things.  And  inside  Larrick's  heart  there  was  always  a  cer- 
tain murmur,  since  one  who  thinks  at  all  must  think  largely 
in  unspoken  words. 

He  could  speak  at  times,  of  course,  as  now  and  then  the 
desert  itself  laughs  and  rollicks  or  bursts  into  uproar.  But, 
compared  with  the  people  about  him,  who  kept  up  an  almost 
incessant  prattle,  Larrick  spoke  rarely,  briefly,  and  without 
grace. 

This  was  not  resented,  for  silence  is  only  rarely  offensive: 
it  is  speech  that  is  nearly  always  risky. 

In  the  mountains  his  taciturnity  was  less  noted,  since  the 
heights  had  a  quieting  effect  on  everyone.  They  were  them- 
selves monstrous  syllables  in  a  vast  sentence,  and  quelled  the 
most  voluble.  They  seemed  to  roll  up  a  thunder  so  deep 
and  of  so  slow  a  vibration  that,  though  filling  the  air,  they 
were  never  quite  audible. 

In  the  completeness  of  Larrick's  grief  he  did  not  cry  aloud 
like  Job,  though  he  was  as  bitter  as  Job,  and  felt  himself 
equally  the  innocent  victim  of  a  cruel  bet  between  God  and 
the  devil.  In  Texas  they  described  a  bad  man,  a  really  very 
bad  man,  as  one  who  would  shoot  a  man  to  see  which  way 
he  fell,  and  take  a  bet  anyway.  That  was  Larrick's  present 
opinion  of  the  Deity. 

Larrick's  love  had  found  little  to  say  to  Clelia,  and  his 
grief  found  little  to  say  of  her.  His  contempt  for  heaven 
and  its  wanton  ruthlessness  found  no  expression.  He  suf- 
fered wordless.  He  bled  inside.  He  was  what  the  poet 


3i4  BEAUTY 

Sa'di  called,  "the  moth  that  desires  and  is  drawn  to  its 
agony,  mute." 

His  wordlessness  oppressed  Randel  and  Nancy  and  Burnley 
now.  They  felt  the  vanity  of  all  speech;  yet  any  chatter 
was  better  than  black  silence.  Larrick  quenched  their  talk, 
however,  by  the  very  weight  of  his  silence. 

The  sheriff  and  the  reporter,  on  the  other  hand,  did  not 
know  Larrick  or  relish  the  hush  of  meditation. 

They  had  come  here  to  slake  their  curiosity,  to  find  out 
things;  they  bristled  with  questions.  To  the  reporter, 
Madsen,  especially,  silence  was  a  denial  of  bread  and  butter. 
It  was  worse  than  an  insult;  it  was  an  embargo  on  business. 

Sheriff  Brummit  could  still  less  brook  the  offense  to  his 
authority.  Silence  was  in  itself  a  form  of  hiding  from  jus- 
tice. He  must  apprehend  the  souls  of  all  the  witnesses  and 
ransack  their  memories  in  quest  of  clews. 

When  Madsen  and  Brummit  opened  their  batteries  of 
questions,  awkward,  ill-worded,  unintelligent,  crass  questions, 
Nancy,  Randel,  and  Burnley  made  impatient  and  con- 
tradictory answers  that  were  convincingly  innocent  from 
their  very  lack  of  skill. 

But  Larrick  said  nothing  at  all;  he  walked  away  as  if  he 
were  guilty.  And  indeed  he  did  feel  remorse  and  guilt 
of  a  kind.  If  he  had  not  suggested  the  statue  of  Clelia, 
had  not  helped  Randel  carry  the  shaft  of  ice  to  the  cabin, 
had  not  helped  him  with  the  plaster  casts,  Randel  could  not 
have  accomplished  a  task  that  had  begun  to  look  to  Larrick 
less  and  less  like  the  work  of  a  priest  and  more  and  more 
like  the  work  of  a  ghoul. 

If  Clelia  had  not  been  taken  to  the  cabin  the  cabin  would 
not  have  been  set  on  fire  and  Clelia  would  not  have  vanished 
utterly  from  sight — almost  from  imagination.  Randel  had 
felt  that  he  was  robbing  the  grave  of  a  beauty  it  would  only 
hide  and  devour.  But  by  the  same  token  he  had  robbed 
Clelia  of  the  high  right  of  a  resting  place.  He  had  robbed 
her  even  of  form  and  substance,  of  integrity,  of  that  existence 
which  even  the  dead  have.  She  was  nothing  now. 

They  had  robbed  her  father  and  mother,  too,  of  the  fare- 
well vision  of  her,  and  of  the  possession  of  the  body  they  had 


THE   ARTISTS    AND    THE    LAW    315 

given  her.  They  had  not  now  so  much  as  a  little  urn  of 
ashes  to  enshrine.  Clelia  was  like  a  figure  in  a  dream  or  a 
fiction.  She  was  as  if  she  had  never  been. 

Thinking  with  terror  such  thoughts,  Larrick  felt  guiltier 
than  Cain.  He  wanted  to  run  howling  about  the  mountains. 
It  took  all  his  self-command  to  walk  away  slowly.  He  made 
surly  answers  or  none  when  he  was  followed  and  questioned. 

Rebuffed  and  offended,  Brummit  and  Madsen  could  see 
him  pause  at  a  distance,  wringing  his  hands,  pacing  the  snow, 
and  flinging  his  head  about  in  torment.  This  was  guilt, 
indeed,  of  a  strange  sort,  but  they  took  it  for  guilt  of  a  sort 
very  familiar,  but  no  less  incredible. 

Murders  were  so  frequent  nowadays  all  about  the  world 
that  the  crime  wave  was  spoken  of  as  a  cosmic  disaster,  a 
tidal  wave  following  the  moon  around  the  globe  day  after 
day,  night  after  night. 

Silence  was  wisdom,  as  they  had  often  heard  tell,  and  it 
seemed  to  them  the  shrewdness  of  guilt  that  recommended 
silence  to  Larrick. 

Their  logic  was  good  in  the  premises.  The  guide  and  the 
chauffeur  had  told  them  of  seeing  Clelia  in  the  ice  with  the 
scar  in  her  brow.  This  meant  murder.  That  meant  a 
murderer.  Larrick  was  the  only  guilty-looking,  guilty- 
acting  person  in  the  region. 

Madsen  wrote  copious  notes  and  prepared  telegrams  to 
be  sent  as  soon  as  he  reached  the  village  again.  He  nagged 
Brummit  with  his  theories  and  made  the  slow  sheriff  jealous 
of  his  ready  deductions.  And,  finally,  he  openly  demanded 
the  arrest  of  Larrick. 

21 


CHAPTER  VII 

'""THE  sheriff,  not  quite  convinced,  debated  his  duty  aloud, 
1  went  to  Mrs.  Roantree  and  mentioned  the  reporter's 
suggestion. 

Nancy  promised  to  slap  the  damned  fool's  fool  face  for 
him.  Mrs.  Roantree  spoke  with  the  dignity  of  an  ambassa- 
dress: 

"  You  don't  think  I'll  allow  you  to  arrest  one  of  my  guests, 
do  you?" 

The  sheriff  mumbled,  "We-ell,  that's  so." 

But  Madsen  broke  in,  sharply,  "Somebody  murdered  one 
of  your  guests,  Mrs.  Roantree." 

The  sheriff  pendulated,  "That's  so,  too." 

Mrs.  Roantree  waxed  furious: 

"Mr.  Brummit,  you'll  do  me  a  favor  if  you'll  put  that 
impertinent  idiot  off  my  place." 

The  pendulum  swung  every  which  way.  Mrs.  Roantree 
was  an  important  summer  customer,  but  Madsen  repre- 
sented the  political  tyranny  of  the  press.  To  Mrs.  Roan- 
tree's  suffocation,the  sheriff  obeyed  the  reporter,  apologizing 
to  his  patroness : 

"  If  a  feller's  innercent,  it  won't  hurt  him  to  be  in  the  hands 
of  the  law." 

He  hurried  away  to  escape  the  lava  that  was  about  to 
erupt  in  Mrs.  Roantree's  soul.  He  approached  Larrick  and 
set  a  hand  on  his  shoulder,  saying,  meekly  enough: 

"  I'd  just  as  soon  you  didn't  get  out  of  my  sight.  I  might 
want  you." 

"All  right,"  Larrick  said.  "Anything  I  can  do — just  let 
me  know." 

He  was  so  pleasant  about  it  that  Nancy,  who  had  followed, 
flared: 

"Do  you  realize  that  you  are  being  arrested  for — for — " 

Larrick   was   startled.     He   expected   her   to   say,    "for 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    317 

destroying  the  body  of  Clelia."  And  he  flew  all  the  visible 
signals  of  confession. 

But  Nancy  finished  her  sentence  with  the  words,  "for  kill- 
ing Clelia.  This  newspaper  creature  thinks  you  killedClelia !" 

She  watched  with  anxiety  to  see  how  Larrick  would  take 
this  charge,  and  so  did  the  others.  There  are  so  many  ways 
of  taking  an  accusation.  As  the  judge  said  in  "  Mrs.  Dane's 
Defence,"  there  is  the  calm  of  innocence,  and  there  is  the 
brazen  calm  of  guilt;  there  is  the  confusion  of  innocence 
startled  by  a  baseless  accusation — and  the  confusion  of 
guilt  confronted  with  discovery. 

Nancy  expected  Larrick  to  laugh  uproariously 

Larrick  was  stunned  for  a  moment.  He  had  to  think  his 
way  through  several  layers  of  insulation  before  he  came  to 
realize  what  he  was  actually  accused  of.  He  stared  at 
Madsen,  who  was  inspecting  him  as  if  he  held  a  microscope 
over  a  spider. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Larrick's  selflessness  that  he  did 
not  feel  that  his  own  majesty  of  innocence  had  been  im- 
pugned or  his  personal  dignity  assailed.  He  thought  of  his 
love  of  Clelia. 

That  love  was  like  a  chalice  on  an  altar.  And  a  foul 
scoundrel  had  spit  in  it. 

As  a  priest  would  strike  out  at  sacrilege,  so  Larrick's  very 
muscles  wrought  his  will  before  he  could  meditate  on  action. 

Madsen  went  backward  down  the  hill,  somersaulting  over 
and  over  and  accumulating  bulk  like  a  rolling  snowball. 
The  sheriff  reached  for  his  pistol,  expecting  that  Larrick 
would  start  to  run.  But  Larrick  marched  down  the  path  the 
revolving  Madsen  had  cleared  and  kicked  the  snow  off  the 
wretch,  yanked  him  out  of  it,  and  lifted  him  with  one  hand 
to  meet  the  blow  of  the  other  hand,  as  he  groaned : 

"You  dare  say  a  word  against  Clelia  and  I'll  beat  the  life 
out  of  you,  you — " 

"I  haven't  said  a  word  against  the  lady,"  Madsen  sput- 
tered with  bruised  mouth. 

Larrick  snarled : 

"You  said  you  thought  I  killed  her.  What  did  she  ever 
do  that  I  should  kill  her?  She  was  God's  own,  and  I  wor- 
shiped her !  I'd  have  died  for  her !  And  you — you —  " 


3i8  BEAUTY 

He  was  choking  with  vile  words  that  he  could  not  utter 
in  the  very  face  of  Nancy,  who  had  thrust  in  between  him 
and  the  prey  of  his  ire. 

Madsen's  head  was  swimming  less  with  the  buffets  it  had 
taken  than  with  amazement  at  Larrick's  mad  theory. 
When  Nancy  had  wrested  him  free  from  the  menace  of 
Larrick's  fists,  and  held  those  painful  sledges  fast,  Madsen 
shrieked: 

"Accordin*  to  that,  nobody  could  have  killed  her,  because 
she  was  so — so  good."  He  had  nearly  said  "so  damned 
good." 

Larrick  flung  back  at  him  over  Nancy's  shoulder: 

"Of  course  nobody  could  have  killed  her  but  some  crazy 
beast  that  hated  her  because  she  wouldn't  be  a  beast  with 
him." 

And  now  the  outcries  of  his  reverence  for  Clelia  fell  upon 
Nancy  like  blows: 

"  She  was  sweet  to  me  as  she  could  be.  I  wanted  her  love, 
but  I  wasn't  good  enough  to  get  it.  I  loved  her  all  the  more 
for  that.  When  you  say  I  might  have  killed  her  you  insult 
her,  not  me.  Call  me  what  you  want  and  I  don't  mind  any 
more  'n  I'd  mind  a  rattlesnake's  noise.  But  you  say  a  word 
against  her,  or  my  love  for  her,  and  by  God,  I'll — I'll  ham- 
string you!" 

Madsen  had  no  impulse  to  brave  this  promise.  He  was 
altogether  convinced  both  that  Larrick  could  not  have  mur- 
dered Clelia  and  that  he  could  very  readily  murder  Madsen. 

Madsen  would  have  gladly  seen  Larrick  swing.  He  would 
have  lent  a  hand  on  the  rope.  But  he  was  helplessly  con- 
verted to  Larrick's  innocence  of  taking  Clelia's  life.  Lar- 
rick's almost  greater  guilt  was  that  of  blasphemy  and  the 
violent  laying  on  of  hands.  The  Press,  the  ark  of  the  great 
god  Curiosity,  was  assailed  in  the  person  of  its  Levite. 

But  the  sanctity  of  the  news  gatherers  was  not  yet  recog- 
nized by  the  law,  and  there  was  so  special  penalty  for  man- 
handling them. 

The  sheriff  was  doubly  on  Larrick's  side  now.  He  had  felt 
his  own  dignity  more  compromised  by  Madsen  than  by  Lar- 
rick, and  he  felt  grateful  to  Larrick  for  administering  a 
punishment  he  had  not  dared. 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    319 

He  took  command  of  the  field,  and  Madsen  maintained  a 
humbled  demeanor. 

"I  guess  we'd  better  look  for  a  cloo  or  somethin',"  the 
sheriff  said.  "If  they  was  any  tracks  down  by  the  lake  the 
snow  and  ice  have  covered  'em.  We  might  begin  with  the 
poor  young  lady's  room.  That's  where  she  must  have 
started  from,  and  we  maybe  might  locate  somethin'  there." 

The  sorry  procession  wended  its  way  to  the  Big  House  and 
left  snowy  footmarks  on  its  rugs. 

When  Clelia's  door  was  thrust  open  by  the  heavy  hand  of 
the  sheriff  the  French  maid,  Berthe,  was  discovered.  She 
sprang  up  like  a  frightened  ghost  and  Madsen  wondered  if 
she  might  not  be  an  accomplice.  He  loved  that  word  and 
the  kindred  phrases,  "accessory  before  the  fact"  and  "after 
the  fact." 

The  little  dog,  the  Empress,  sent  up  shrill  protests  against 
the  intrusion.  She  barked  and  charged,  retreated  and 
charged  again  until  Larrick  gathered  her  into  the  familiar 
nest  of  his  arms  and  reassured  her. 

Nancy  explained  to  Berthe  in  French  that  the  visitors 
meant  no  harm,  and  Madsen  acquired  another  suspicion. 
Why  should  French  be  used  except  for  purposes  of  deception? 
It  was  a  wicked  language,  anyway. 

He  and  Brummit  persecuted  Berthe  with  questions  and 
enraged  the  Empress  with  their  search  of  every  cranny. 
They  opened  every  drawer  and  pried  into  every  closet,  tried 
every  window.  Whenever  they  laid  out  a  garment  or  any 
property  of  Clelia's  the  Empress  took  possession  of  it. 

Madsen  hunted  for  fingerprints.  They  had  played  an 
important  part  in  all  the  detective  fiction  that  was  pub- 
lished as  fact  in  the  news  press  and  as  romance  in  the  maga- 
zines. But  Madsen  knew  nothing  of  them  when  he  found 
them. 

They  went  out  on  the  porch,  but  it  was  a  mosaic  of  ice 
crystals,  and  the  ground  was  clad  in  complete  mail. 

They  dawdled  back  into  the  house  and  plodded  from  room 
to  room,  fumbling  hopelessly  at  everything,  to  Mrs.  Roan- 
tree's  intense  wrath.  Her  grief  for  Clelia  was  abysmal. 
The  visitors  seemed  to  be  cattle  trampling  about  a  grave. 

When  they  reached  her  chamber  Nancy  Fleet's  manner 


320  BEAUTY 

changed  from  one  of  scorn  for  Madsen  to  one  of  hostility. 
She  had  been  bmtal  and  direct  with  him  before.  Now  she 
grew  anxious  and  plainly  complex.  The  cleverest  deceiver 
can  rarely  mimic  perfect  sincerity;  it  is  not  a  question  of 
what  not  to  do  or  say ;  it  is  simply  the  inescapable  fact  that 
people  who  have  something  to  hide  must  always  think  with 
a  divided  brain. 

Nancy  was  using  all  her  wits,  but  it  was  evident  even  to  the 
sheriff  and  the  undertaker  that  she  had  something  on  her 
mind.  Madsen  shifted  his  weather-vane  suspicion  to  her 
quarter  now.  A  theory  was  ready  at  hand : 

Nancy  was  plainly  in  love  with  Larrick.  Her  quick  rallies 
to  his  defense  proved  that.  But  Larrick  said  he  loved  Clelia. 
Even  in  his  own  bewilderment  Madsen  had  noted  that 
Larrick 's  outburst  in  Clelia 's  glorification  distressed  Nancy. 

The  next  step  was  easy :  Nancy  was  jealous  of  Clelia  and 
had  put  her  out  of  the  way.  Jealous  women  were  always 
furnishing  the  hungry  newspapers  with  murders.  It  would 
be  easier  for  a  woman  to  have  "lured "  Clelia  out  of  her  room 
than  for  a  man. 

This  theory  was  simmering  cozily  in  Madsen's  skull  pan. 
The  more  Nancy  tried  to  hurry  the  inspection  of  her  room 
the  more  Madsen  deliberated. 

When  Brummit  offered  to  open  a  door  Nancy  made  haste 
to  say: 

"That's  only  my  clothes'  closet." 

"Oh,"  said  Brummit  and  moved  decently  away. 

But  as  soon  as  Nancy  had  walked  past,  Madsen  opened 
the  door.  Nancy  whirled  on  him  with  such  a  frightened 
look  that  he  pushed  in.  He  found  himself  in  a  deep  jungle 
of  dresses,  dinner  gowns  of  satin,  sport  suits,  furs — more 
women's  togs  than  the  whole  equipment  of  the  Paris  Em- 
porium in  the  village.  The  room  was  fragrant  of  a  beautiful 
woman's  habiliment. 

While  Madsen's  head  was  lost  in  silks  and  sables  his  feet 
were  trampling  over  tennis  shoes,  slippers,  boots — enough  to 
stock  a  small  shop.  But  his  feet  also  encountered  a  blanketed 
heap  of  something  that  rolled  under  him  and  made  him 
stumble. 

He  fell  to  his  hands  and  knees  and  could  not  imagine  what 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    321 

the  blankets  covered.  He  hoped  it  was  a  corpse.  Then  he 
could  call  this  place  the  House  of  Mystery. 

Nancy  was  instantly  upon  him,  commanding  him  to  come 
out  of  there.  But  as  he  rose  he  lifted  a  blanket  away  and 
disclosed,  to  his  stupefaction,  an  array  of  white  blocks  of 
various  sizes  and  curious  shapes. 

"What's  those?"  he  asked. 

Nancy  feared  to  tell  the  truth,  and  she  was  quite  unable  to 
think  of  anything  that  the  plaster  molds  looked  like  except 
plaster  molds.  She  turned  her  eyes  helplessly  to  Randel, 
who  wasted  no  imagination,  but  answered,  "Plaster  molds." 

"What  of?"  said  Madsen. 

Then  Randel  was  silent. 

It  was  not  so  much  ingenuity  as  lack  of  it  that  led  Madsen 
to  guess  the  truth.  He  had  thought  of  nothing  but  Clelia 
for  hours.  He  had  seen  the  plaster  splotches  in  the  cabin 
before  it  burned.  He  nodded  and  made  it  in  one  guess. 

"Of  Miss  Clelia?"  he  asked. 

Nobody  denied  it. 

And  now  Madsen  rose  with  a  grunt  of  triumph — a  sort  of 
uncouth,  "Aha!" — a  clumsy,  "Umm-humm!" 

Madsen  was  as  exultant  as  a  terrier.  The  others  were  as 
guilty  as  dogs  caught  at  sheep  killing. 

Nancy's  scorn,  Larrick's  violence,  Mrs.  Roantree's  calm  su- 
periority were  all  suddenly  clothed  in  an  altered  light.  They 
could  not  but  see  themselves  as  they  looked  to  Madsen.  The 
loathsome,  meddlesome  cad  had  suddenly  become  something 
dreadful.  His  impertinence  was  ennobled  by  its  success. 

Mrs.  Roantree  had  the  quickest  and  the  most  practiced 
temper.  She  was  trebly  offended  by  the  crime  in  her  home, 
by  the  insolence  of  Madsen, iand  by  the  duplicity  of  her  guests. 
They  had  not  even  hinted  to  her  that  such  molds  existed. 

She  turned  on  Randel  with  the  wrath  of  a  queen  mother. 
Her  glare  made  everyone  cower,  as  the  lightning  does  with 
expectation  of  the  thunder  din  to  follow. 

Randel  put  up  his  hand  to  check  the  tempest. 

"I  made  those  casts  of  the  poor  child's  body  for  two 
reasons,"  he  said.  "I  wanted  to  preserve  her  beauty  and 
I  wanted  to  preserve  the  evidence  in  its  most  permanent 
form." 


BEAUTY 

Sheriff  Brummit,  desponding  again  before  Madsen's  su- 
perior skill,  looked  at  Randel  with  a  dazed  new  hope. 

Randel  went  on: 

"  I  read  a  story  some  years  ago  by  Melville  Davison  Post. 
It  told  of  a  lawyer  who  got  a  murderer  acquitted  by  advising 
him  to  destroy  the  body  utterly.  In  court  he  defied  the 
prosecution  to  bring  forward  the  body  of  the  victim — or 
any  part  of  it.  There  was  no  corpus  delicti,  therefore  there 
could  be  no  case  for  a  jury.  The  judge  had  to  admit  it, 
and  discharge  the  jury  and  the  prisoner. 

"  My  cabin  was  burned  up  through  no  fault  of  ours.  With 
it  every  trace  of  Clelia  vanished.  Of  course,  several  of  us  saw 
her  in  the  ice,  but  our  testimony  would  be  of  the  vaguest  sort. 

"Now  we  have  the  absolute  replica  of  the  poor  child  and 
of  the  fatal  wound  in  the  minutest  detail.  I  can  reconstitute 
her  form  to  perfection.  You  owe  me  a  debt  of  gratitude, 
Mr.  Sheriff,  instead  of  the  suspicion  this  young  newspaper 
fiend  is  trying  to  fasten  on  each  of  us  in  turn." 

The  sheriff  was  profoundly  impressed.  But  Madsen  would 
not  surrender  to  any  emotions  of  the  sort.  He  was  no 
respecter  of  persons.  He  laughed  harshly  and  shook  his 
finger  under  Randel's  nose  as  he  sneered: 

"That  sounds  very  noble  and  fine.  But  if  your  motive 
was  so  grand  and  all  why  did  you  hide  the  casts  in  here 
and  why  did  this  lady  try  to  keep  us  from  finding  them  and 
act  so  funny  when  I  came  across  'em?  What  you  got  to 
say  to  that?  I'd  like  to  know." 

Randel,  with  the  patience  of  an  artist  for  a  Philistine, 
answered: 

"I'll  tell  you,  but  you  won't  understand.  Mr.  Larrick 
suffered  so  bitterly  because  the  girl's  beauty  would  pass 
from  sight  and  memory  that  he  made  me  feel  his  grief.  I 
proposed  to  take  the  cast.  He  helped  me.  The  work  was 
purely  a  labor  of  love  and  of  art.  The  legal  phase  of  it 
occurred  to  me  later.  It  was  merely  incidental  and  quite 
unimportant." 

"Unimportant!"  Madsen  snapped. 

"Comparatively,"  said  Randel.  "It  can  make  little  dif- 
ference to  the  world  whether  it  ever  finds  out  who  killed 
Clelia  or  not  or  why  he  did  it.  If  you  found  the  wretch 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    323 

and  convicted  him  and  put  him  to  death  in  the  electric  chair 
what  difference  would  it  make?  Crime  would  go  on.  You 
would  have  one  murderer  the  less,  but  no  less  murder. 

"Since  the  beginning  of  the  world  people  have  been  com- 
mitting murders  and  being  caught,  or  not,  as  the  case  might 
be;  and  convicted  or  acquitted,  as  the  case  might  be;  and 
executed  or  pardoned,  as  the  case  might  be. 

"Since  the  beginning  of  the  world  the  courts  have  been 
spending  untold  sums  on  detecting  criminals  and  punishing 
them  one  way  or  another.  And  what  good  has  it  done? 
More  murders  are  committed  in  many  of  the  states  where 
there  is  capital  punishment  than  in  states  where  there  is 
none.  When  judges  have  been  severe,  crime  has  flourished. 
When  what  we  call  justice  has  slept,  crime  also  has  some- 
times dozed — and  sometimes  not. 

"Punishment  seems  to  make  absolutely  no  difference  one 
way  or  another.  The  world  has  never  heard  of  so  much 
crime  as  is  going  on  to-day.  Yet  Christ  died  to  save  the 
world  nearly  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  every  imaginable 
scheme  has  been  tried  on  the  criminals,  from  boiling  oil  to 
the  parole  system,  and  nothing  seems  to  work." 

Madsen  was  impatient  of  such  a  digression  from  the  forth- 
right of  his  mission,  but  he  deigned  to  interpose  a  conde- 
scending irony. 

"I  suppose  you'd  give  up  punishments  and  just  let  the 
world  all  go  to  pot.  You  wouldn't  punish  the  murderer 
of  Miss  Clelia  if  you  found  him?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  would.  I'd  be  glad  to  take  a  cast  of  him  in 
molten  lead.  But  that  would  be  revenge,  not  justice. 
It's  justice  I'm  talking  about.  And  it  doesn't  make  any 
difference  what  I  think  or  say.  People  are  going  on  com- 
mitting the  same  old  crimes  and  applying  the  same  old 
household  remedies,  no  matter  what  I  think  or  say.  You 
can't  stop  crime  and  you  can't  stop  justice.  But  what  I 
say  is  that  neither  of  them  seems  to  be  getting  anywhere. 

"It  wouldn't  do  any  particular  good  now  to  find  Clelia 's 
murderer  or  to  punish  him.  But  I  can  do — I  have  done — 
one  glorious  thing — I  have  saved  Clelia 's  beauty  from  his 
miserable  hands.  Her  darling  soul  is  gone,  her  fun,  her 
laugh,  her  mischief.  But  her  image  is  redeemed. 


324  BEAUTY 

"The  most  famous  statue  of  Greece  was  Praxiteles' 
Venus  of  Knidos.  It  was  taken  to  Byzantium  and  burned 
up  in  a  fire.  All  we  have  of  it  now  is  a  little  picture  of  it  on 
some  old  coins.  It  can  never  be  brought  back  to  the  world. 
It  is  lost  forever. 

"A  fiend  set  fire  to  Diana's  Ephesian  temple.  The  death 
of  that  fiend  couldn't  be  any  consolation,  because  it  couldn't 
restore  the  temple. 

"Suppose  you  get  whoever  it  was  that  destroyed  Clelia. 
It  wouldn't  make  much  difference.  It  wouldn't  make  any- 
body any  happier  or  the  world  any  better.  But  Clelia 's 
beauty  will  be  so  marvelous  and  so  nearly  immortal  that  it 
will  make  it  almost  worth  while  that  she  perished  this  way 
instead  of  growing  old  or  shapeless  or  dying  of  some  disease 
or  accident. 

"When  you  come  to  that,  it  was  really  the  man  who 
killed  her  that  gave  her  to  art  and  to  eternity.  Without 
him  we  should  never  have  had  her." 

Larrick  could  not  endure  this  excess  of  logic  chopping. 
He  flung  Randel  a  glance  of  such  protest  that  Randel  mum- 
bled, "I  beg  your  pardon,"  and  grew  more  humanly  sorrow- 
ful over  the  fate  of  the  girl  denied  the  world  and  denied  to 
the  world. 

Brummit  and  Madsen  looked  at  each  other  and  shook 
their  heads,  implying  that  Randel  was  half  cracked.  They 
pitied  him  with  village  contempt  for  urban  foolishness. 

He  pitied  himself  a  little  for  exposing  his  secret  gospel  to 
these  barbarians. 

But  the  four  were  really  priests  of  different  religions. 
Randel  worshiped  a  misty  god  called  Art,  with  a  vast  college 
of  priests,  no  two  of  whom  agreed  on  the  nature  of  the  wishes 
of  their  god  any  more  than  any  other  priests  united  in  one 
cult.  Larrick  worshiped  life  and  the  right  to  live  and  love. 

Brummit's  god  was  the  Law,  another  vague  cloud-deity, 
whose  priests  have  always  battled  among  themselves. 

Madsen 's  god  was  a  more  definite  creature  with  a  simpler 
table  of  commandments.  He  dealt  in  happenings,  and  it  was 
his  creed  to  find  out  as  many  as  possible  of  an  interesting 
sort,  to  make  them  as  interesting  as  possible,  and  to  lose  as 
little  time  as  possible  in  getting  the  report  published.  Like 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    325 

the  authors  of  history  and  other  forms  of  semi-imaginative 
fancy,  he  wrote  fiction  founded  on  fact. 

He  was  studying  the  plaster  molds  now.  He  had  never 
seen  any  before,  and  he  could  not  understand  how  Randel 
could  pretend  that  they  contained  so  much. 

His  infinite  capacity  for  giving  pains  was  not  yet  exhausted. 
Just  as  Randel  was  convinced  that  he  had  overwhelmed 
Madsen  with  large  talk  and  large  ideas,  the  correspondent 
broke  out  again : 

"Admitting  all  you  say,  Mr.  Randel,  there's  one  question 
I'd  like  to  ask  you:  seeing  as  your  motives  were  so  artistic 
and  all  that,  why  did  you  hide  these  plaster  molds?  Why 
didn't  you  tell  us  about  'em  first  off  ? " 

Randel  winced  at  the  inextinguishable  distrust,'  but  he 
answered  frankly,  never  dreaming  of  involving  Nancy  in  his 
apology: 

"  In  the  first  place,  I  was  afraid  that  Mrs.  Roantree  would 
be  shocked  by  what  we  had  done.  Afterward,  I  was  sure 
she  would  be  very  glad  the  thing  was  done.  But  just  at  first 
I  feared  she  would  think  it  an  unpardonable  presumption. 
I  felt  the  same  way  about  her  parents. 

"Then  we  saw  you  people  coming  and  we  were  afraid  you 
might  misunderstand — just  as  you  have  done." 

Madsen  sniffed,  "Maybe  we  misunderstood  and  maybe 
we  understood." 

Randel  shifted  a  little  of  the  burden : 

"You  will  please  remember,  young  man,  that  when  we  took 
the  cast  we  did  nothing  to  the  child's  body  except  to  remove 
the  ice.  We  never  dreamed  that  one  of  you  would  set  the 
cabin  on  fire  and  leave  nothing  but  ashes." 

Mr.  Hingeley,  who  had  been  intensely  interested  in  the 
investigations,  lost  his  interest  abruptly  and  walked  away. 
Randel  went  on : 

"You  can  thank  Heaven  now,  Mr.  Sheriff,  that  we  took  the 
cast.  If  it  weren't  for  these  molds  you  would  not  have  a 
single  clew,  as  you  call  it.  You  people  would  be  giving  ex- 
planations instead  of  demanding  them." 

"That's  so,"  said  the  sheriff. 

But  Madsen  had  still  another  annoyance  in  reserve.  He 
startled  Brummit  as  well  as  the  others  by  proposing: 


326  BEAUTY 

"Sheriff,  looks  like  to  me  you  ought  to  have  Mr.  Randel 
take  these  here  molds  and  perdooce  that  statue  he  tells 
about  so's  we  could  have  it  on  hand  for  the  inquest  and  the 
trial." 

The  sheriff  uncomfortably  regarded  Randel.  But  Randel 
shook  his  head. 

"I  can't  make  a  cast  from  the  molds  here.  That  fire  you 
people  started  burned  up  all  my  materials.  I'll  have  to  take 
the  molds  to  New  York  and  finish  the  work  there  at  my 
studio.  I  can  send  you  a  copy  from  there." 

His  physician  had  ordered  him  to  keep  out  of  New  York 
City  for  a  year  or  more,  but  Randel,  who  had  no  courage 
for  war  or  the  hazards  of  adventure,  would  have  laid  his 
gaunt  frame  down  for  a  stepping  block  to  his  art. 

Then  he  had  a  sudden  fright.  What  if  this  unquenchable 
reporter  and  this  stodgy  sheriff  should  decide  to  forbid  him 
to  take  the  plaster  molds  from  the  county  where  the  trial 
must  be  held?  If  they  did  not  speak  of  it,  the  village 
prosecutor  would  suggest  it.  Randel  was  determined  that 
he  would  smuggle  the  molds  out  of  the  reach  of  these  profane 
hands  at  any  cost. 

Madsen  would  doubtless  have  risen  to  the  opportunity  of 
a  final  interference  if  he  had  not  been  engaged  in  literary 
meditation.  Pondering  the  mold  he  held,  he  was  trying  to 
figure  out  the  most  exciting  way  of  presenting  the  story  to 
his  readers.  He  felt  that  he  must  have  his  story  ready  to 
pour  on  the  wires  as  soon  as  he  could  reach  the  telegraph 
office.  He  knew  that  a  great  and  harrowed  public  was 
fretting  for  further  details.  His  little  clientele  of  a  few 
hundred  readers  was  enlarged  now  to  include  the  entire 
population  of  a  republic  in  which  the  right  to  know  all  the 
scandals  was  held  inalienable. 

He  was  afraid  to  leave  the  sheriff  there  lest  something 
should  turn  up  to  give  the  sheriff  an  advantage  of  informa- 
tion; but  he  could  not  persuade  the  sheriff  to  set  off  for  the 
village.  The  sheriff  had  come  there  to  arrest  somebody. 
He  had  nothing  to  gain  from  publication  until  he  had  ac- 
complished something  definite. 

At  length  the  undertaker,  Hingeiey,  consented  to  take 
Madsen  back  to  town  in  his  own  sleigh.  He  was  as  melan- 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    327 

choly  as  an  undertaker  ought  to  be.  He  had  brougnt  across 
the  snowy  mountains  the  best  casket  in  his  shop,  and  then 
had  been  unlucky  enough  to  burn  up  the  cabin  and  with  it 
the  only  excuse  for  his  wares.  He  could  hardly  ask  Mrs. 
Roantree  to  buy  his  merchandise.  She  had  suffered  the  loss 
of  a  building  and  a  beloved  guest  already. 

Nobody  could  be  more  useless  there  than  Mr.  Hingeley 
and  no  one  more  unwelcome  than  Madsen.  When  they 
offered  to  depart  together,  nobody  even  asked  them  to 
tarry  for  a  bit  of  food.  They  set  off  through  the  snow  broken 
only  by  the  grooves  of  their  own  runners. 

The  sheriff  seemed  to  take  on  majesty  as  fast  as  Madsen 
took  on  distance.  As  the  setting  sun  elongates  shadows 
that  he  annulled  at  noon,  so  the  newspaper  man  increased 
the  policeman's  stature  by  his  mere  departure. 

While  the  sheriff  sauntered  about  in  a  stupor  of  indecision 
which  he  disguised  as  meditation  Mrs.  Roantree  and  her 
guests  made  ready  to  escape  from  the  white  prison  walls  of 
the  mountains.  The  trunks  of  the  others  had  gone  long  be- 
fore, but  Randel  and  Burnley  began  to  pack  their  things  also. 

Carefully  avoiding  the  notice  of  the  sheriff,  Randel  con- 
cealed the  plaster  molds  in  his  luggage  with  the  help  of 
Nancy  and  Larrick.  They  had  the  surreptition  of  smug- 
glers, with  a  hope  of  only  the  vaguest  profit. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  guide  and  the  maid,  Berthe,  had  been 
preparing  a  belated  luncheon.  It  was  only  when  they  were 
called  to  the  table  that  the  overwrought  souls  realized  how 
hungry  their  forgotten  bodies  had  grown. 

Their  absorption  in  the  refueling  of  their  exhausted  fur- 
naces kept  them  from  all  thought  of  observation  or  expect- 
ancy. They  were  startled  and  disgusted  when  they  heard 
a  knock  at  the  door  and  Madsen  reappeared. 

He  was  greatly  stirred,  for  he  brought  with  him  new 
material.  He  had  met  Clelia's  father  and  mother  on  the 
road,  together  with  a  troupe  of  newspaper  men  and  detec- 
tives from  New  York. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

rPHE  father  of  Clelia  was  one  of  those  fierce  souls  that 
1  hurtle  through  life  with  the  swooping  ferocity  of  the 
hawk.  Clelia  had  inherited  his  velocity,  his  rapacity  for 
emotions,  but  had  lived  too  brief  a  life  to  encounter  the 
storms  and  the  battles  for  quarry.  Her  father  loved  with 
all  the  voracious  passion  of  his  hate.  When  he  received  Mrs. 
Roantree's  telegram  telling  him  of  Clelia's  loss  he  made 
ready  for  instant  departure.  When  his  secretary  found  that 
the  first  train  to  the  Adirondacks  would  not  leave  New 
York  for  several  hours  he  demanded  a  special  train. 

The  railroad  was  in  confusion  from  the  mauling  of  the  big 
storm,  and  the  secretary  was  rebuffed  with  curt  indifference. 
Then  old  Blakeney  forced  his  way  past  all  opposition  to  the 
president's  office  and  compelled  him  to  put  an  engine,  a 
tender,  and  a  private  car  at  his  disposal.  The  railroads  had 
just  been  returned  to  private  ownership  and  management 
after  the  devastating  effect  of  government  control  during  the 
war,  and  personal  influence  was  once  more  substituted  for 
political. 

Blakeney's  grief  for  his  child  gave  him  frenzy.  To  be 
doing  something  saved  him  from  madness.  While  he  fought 
official  opposition  he  lavished  tenderness  on  his  frantic  wife. 
Her  physician  forcibly  prevented  her  from  taking  the  wintry 
journey  until  he  realized  that  action  was  safer  for  her  than 
suspense. 

Blakeney  gathered  up  two  detectives  for  his  purposes,  and 
half  a  dozen  newspaper  men  persuaded  his  secretary  to 
persuade  him  that  it  was  better  to  take  a  few  friendly  re- 
porters along  than  to  leave  Clelia  to  the  mercy  of  the  public 
imagination  and  the  fantastic  work  of  copy  writers  under 
no  constraint  of  fact. 

Already  the  city  was  besnowed  with  extras  headlining  the 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    329 

young  girl  as  if  she  had  been  an  assassinated  President  or 
some  other  public  property.  Beagle  packs  were  nosing  out 
every  bit  of  information  or  misinformation  concerning 
Clelia,  her  family,  Mrs.  Roantree,  and  all  of  her  guests; 
and  the  newspaper  "morgues"  were  being  ransacked  for  old 
clippings,  photographs,  anything  that  might  help  to  fill  a 
column. 

When  at  length  the  little  train  had  slashed  through  the 
gale  and  the  snows  to  the  village  Blakeney  commandeered 
the  fastest  and  biggest  automobile  in  sight.  He  fairly  com- 
pelled the  owner  to  take  him  and  his  wife  across  the  moun- 
tains. The  reporters  chartered  what  craft  they  could,  and 
followed.  Halfway  to  the  Roantree  camp  they  met  Madsen 
and  Hingeley,  who  turned  back  with  them. 

And  so  at  an  unexpectable  hour  the  Blakeneys  arrived  and 
Blakeney  dashed  in  breathless,  as  if  he  had  run  all  the 
way  from  New  York.  His  wife  followed  in  a  rush  and 
flew  to  Mrs.  Roantree's  arms.  The  two  old  women  wept 
together,  while  Nancy  Fleet  assumed  the  hideous  task  of 
answering  bewildered  questions  with  cruel  truths. 

Larrick  had  neither  the  right  nor  the  courage  to  listen  to 
the  ghastly  sounds  that  issued  from  the  throat  of  a  mother 
whose  daughter  was  slain  in  her  youth;  or  the  intolerable 
choked  sobs  of  a  powerful  man  driven  craven  to  the  help- 
nessness  of  a  terrified  and  lacerated  child. 

Their  anguish  was  pitiful  over  the  mere  loss  of  Clelia 
(God  save  the  word  "mere").  They  were  not  yet  aware  of 
the  succession  of  griefs  before  them.  The  sight  of  Clelia 's 
possessions  and  her  trinkets  refreshed  their  power  to  suffer. 

They  cowered  from  the  little  dog,  the  Empress,  who 
could  not  understand  Clelia 's  prolonged  absence,  and  wel- 
comed them  with  rapture  like  a  bitter  irony.  The  Empress 
kept  purring  and  leaping  about  them  and  going  to  Clelia's 
door,  whining  there  and  barking.  Poor  inarticulate  thing, 
with  so  many  questions  to  ask  and  no  language!  But  they 
themselves  were  as  inarticulate  before  the  tangle  of  problems 
and  sorrows  before  them.  They  were  but  the  beaten  hounds 
of  fate,  wondering  why  they  were  punished,  and  helpless  to 
express  their  woe  except  with  raucous  and  unsyllabled  noises. 


330  BEAUTY 

Mrs.  Roantree  moaned  to  Nancy  Fleet: 

"You've  got  to  tell  them  about  the  cabin  burning — and  all 
the  rest.  I'm  beaten.  I'm  useless.  I  want  to  die." 

Larrick  herded  the  sheriff  and  the  newspaper  men  from  the 
room.  Madsen  was  eager  to  remain,  but  one  glance  at 
Larrick's  bloodshot  eyes  and  the  dreadful  hand  he  reached 
out  sent  Madsen  into  the  snow  on  the  run.  He  saw  his  own 
obituary  in  the  Texan's  glare. 

Larrick  had  physical  courage  enough  to  have  attacked  the 
whole  mob.  He  would  have  welcomed  an  excuse  to  wrest 
the  sheriff's  pistol  from  him  and  beat  him  to  death  with  it, 
but  arrant  cowardice  drove  him  from  sight  or  hearing  of 
Clelia's  father  and  mother.  He  plunged  through  the  snow 
and  into  the  woods. 

Randel  and  Burnley  followed  him.  Their  faces  were 
sickly  wan.  Deep  as  they  pushed  into  the  thickets,  they 
could  hear,  or  thought  they  could  hear,  the  wails  and  shrieks 
of  that  couple  whom  love  had  joined,  whom  a  child  had 
blessed  and  cursed  with  new  gifts  of  love  and  sorrow,  whom 
grief  lashed  now  with  the  whips  of  all  the  furies.  Larrick 
felt  like  one  of  those  skulkers  who  in  the  old  days  had  hidden, 
perhaps,  in  these  very  woods,  while  Indian  savages  plied 
the  tomahawk  and  hunting  knife  on  pioneers.  Larrick  felt 
that  somehow  the  Indians  had  learned  the  art  and  the  glee 
of  torture  from  the  angels  themselves  who  roved  the  world 
devising  agonies  for  innocent  wanderers  through  life. 

It  was  only  when  the  twilight  chill  threatened  to  freeze 
them  all  to  death  that  he  and  Randel  and  Burnley  moved 
back  to  the  Big  House.  A  wind  with  the  force  of  a  glacier 
slid  down  the  mountains,  crashing  through  the  trees  and 
pushing  the  unfrozen  snow  forward  in  a  cascade.  As  the 
wind  reached  the  clearing  it  became  a  maelstrom  of  currents 
made  visible  in  the  little  cyclones  of  snow  corkscrewing  about 
the  air  and  forming  angry  spirals  that  spun  and  ran  across 
the  floor  of  glare  ice. 

As  Larrick  and  the  others  came  forth  from  the  trees  they 
saw  the  father  and  mother  of  Clelia  standing  on  the  porch, 
looking  toward  the  burned  cabin.  Nancy  had  just  told 
them  of  what  had  happened. 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    331 

Randel  muttered:  "God  help  them!  The  poor  wretches 
haven't  even  the  comfort  of  the  child's  body  to  weep  over. 
They  haven't  even  her  ashes.  They  are  all  mingled  with  the 
ashes  of  the  cabin." 

Old  Blakeney  had  found  strength  to  endure  even  this  in 
the  compulsion  to  sustain  his  wife.  She  had  known  the 
travail  of  Clelia's  entrance  into  her  own  body  and  into  the 
world;  she  had  given  her  blood  and  bone  and  sinew  and 
milk  and  warmth,  had  manufactured  from  her  own  frame 
that  beautiful  child,  and  felt  rewarded  by  the  flower  that 
bloomed  and  expanded  toward  fruitage.  And  now  all  those 
pangs,  all  those  hopes  and  visions,  were  but  a  long,  sweet 
dream  dispelled  at  the  opening  of  the  eyes.  It  was  as  if  she 
had  never  given  birth  or  nurture  to  a  child. 

To  keep  her  from  despair  beyond  despair  Blakeney  had 
whispered  to  her  that  she  should  have  something  of  Clelia's 
to  cherish.  The  whim  had  come  to  his  insanity  of  grief  to 
gather  up  the  ashes  of  the  cabin  and  the  pyre  and  keep  them 
all  as  a  surety  that  among  them  there  was  something  of 
Clelia. 

But  when  tragedies  are  heaped  too  numerously  upon  one 
another  they  turn  to  farce.  Piling  Pelion  upon  Ossa 
reaches  the  height  of  the  ridiculous  alone.  Excess  of  any- 
thing breeds  laughter.  Otherwise,  perhaps,  mankind  would 
long  since  have  gone  all  mad  before  the  infinite  multiplication 
of  its  woes. 

There  seems  to  be  at  times  a  barbaric  sense  of  farce  in 
nature.  The  winds  are  the  laughter  of  the  world,  and  it  was 
the  wind  that  turned  the  too-many  anguishes  of  these  poor 
fools  to  a  joke. 

The  gale  came  roaring  down  the  mountain  like  a  gigantic 
jester,  a  drunken  jongleur,  whose  sport  is  kings  and  stately 
sorrows.  The  gale  fell  upon  the  heaped  ashes  of  that  cabin 
and  of  what  had  been  a  girl  and  flung  them  into  the  air, 
juggled  them,  ran  with  them  in  clouds,  hurling  them, 
twirling  them,  kicking  them  about  when  they  fell,  and 
sweeping  them  as  with  brooms  down  to  the  lake  and  across 
it,  until  the  ashes  from  being  everywhere  were  nowhere  at  all. 

In  that  appalling  buffoonery  Clelia's  father  and  mother^ 


332  BEAUTY 

were  covered  and  brushed  clear  again  of  ashes  that  might 
have  been  the  embers  of  Clelia's  own  flesh.  They  covered 
their  eyes  from  the  cloud  that  went  by. 

When  the  place  where  the  cabin  had  been  was  winnowed  of 
its  chaff  and  all  the  region  thereabout  was  free  and  white 
with  the  inexhaustible  snow,  there  came  a  pause  in  the  air. 

It  was  as  if  the  motley  fool,  having  played  ninepins  with 
the  great,  paused  and  grinned  as  much  as  to  say : 

"Where  is  your  daughter  now  that  was  so  beautiful,  so 
strong  and  swift  and  glad  ?  What  hope  have  you  now  of  her 
resurrection?  How  many  angels  will  it  take  to  find  her  at 
the  Judgment  Day?" 

In  this  lull,  as  of  that  windy  breath  which  is  our  life,  there 
came  a  lull  in  the  grief  of  Clelia's  father  and  mother.  There 
was  so  much  to  suffer  now  that  they  suffered  no  more  at  all. 
There  were  so  many  mysteries  blowing  about  them  that  they 
had  no  whys  to  ask  whatever. 

They  needed  that  pause,  that  little  death  of  thought. 

By  and  by  the  wind  would  come  again  and  grief  would  re- 
turn upon  them  in  hurricanes  and  in  gentle  zephyrs  of  regret. 

But  for  the  moment  they  were  calm  in  the  repose  of  utter 
defeat. 

They  almost  smiled,  for  it  almost  seemed  as  if  it  were 
Clelia  herself  that  had  done  this  thing.  It  was  like  her  to 
rind  some  cause  for  hilarity  in  the  solemnities  of  the  old; 
to  giggle  in  church  and  to  dance  away  from  everything  dull 
and  dour. 

Larrick  remembered  that  he  had  first  seen  her  as  Puck 
dancing  into  the  moonlight  and  going  out  again  like  a  candle- 
flame  that  has  fluttered  and  gleamed  and  leaped  into  the  dark. 

No  one  had  ever  been  able  to  lay  hold  upon  Clelia's  soul 
or  keep  her  body  fast.  Why  should  they  think  that  they 
could  ever  have  jailed  that  sprite  in  a  coffin  or  an  urn? 
What  use  has  the  flame  for  the  dross  of  the  dull  wood  it  has 
lent  its  red  wings  to  for  a  while  ? 

Clelia  was  laughter  and  light.  Where  do  they  come  from 
and  where  do  they  fly?  What  difference  does  it  make? 
They  are  beautiful.  That  must  be  enough,  whether  we  like 
it  or  no. 


CHAPTER  IX 

next  day  the  Big  House  was  closed  and  all  its  people 
departed  except  one  detective  and  Jeffers,  the  guide, 
who  lingered  like  a  sexton  in  a  white  graveyard — and  Clelia, 
perhaps,  whom  he  sometimes  thought  he  saw  dancing  in  a 
white  nightgown  among  the  doleful  cedars. 

His  reason  and  his  experience  told  him  that  he  beheld 
only  a  scurry  of  snowflakes.  But,  after  all,  what  else  is 
anybody  but  a  brief  assembly  of  dust  caught  up  from  the 
ground  and  given  a  semblance  of  shape  and  unity  only  by 
its  vertiginous  motion  about  its  own  axis  till  the  wind 
forsakes  it  and  it  falls  apart  again? 

Audacity  is  as  good  a  gamble  as  austerity.  The  shameless 
impudence  of  Randel,  the  sculptor,  who  violated  all  the 
rights  and  decencies  to  capture  the  image  of  Clelia,  had 
become  the  one  conservative  force  in  the  whole  disaster. 

The  thing  he  did  in  secret,  for  fear  of  the  horror  and  the 
punishment  the  Philistines  and  the  cherishers  of  old  customs 
would  visit  upon  him,  was  the  thing  that  saved  their  little 
world  from  bleak  nullity. 

The  sheriff,  who  would  have  imprisoned  him  for  invasion 
of  personal  rights,  the  reporter  and  the  public,  who  would 
have  lynched  him  or  at  least  his  good  name  for  scandalous 
outrage,  looked  upon  him  now  as  a  savior  of  something  vital. 

The  father  and  mother,  who  would  have  torn  him  to  pieces 
with  their  hands  for  his  infamy  against  their  daughter,  clung 
to  him  now  and  caressed  him;  he  had  brought  out  of  that 
complete  void,  that  blind  chaos,  a  precious  figure  which  would 
represent  Clelia's  very  self  in  their  eyes.  He  would  give 
them  her  image  to  fondle  and  behold  and  to  point  to  with 
triumph. 

That  is  why  the  censors  are  always  wrong  whatever  they 
do,  however  lofty  their  intentions.  That  is  why  the  whole 
spirit  of  censorship  is  but  an  ape  of  deviltry  masquerading 


334  BEAUTY 

in  the  black  cloth  of  puritanism.  The  censors  commit  the 
unpardonable  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  against  the  in- 
quiring spirit  that  lifts  man  from  the  mire  and  keeps  him 
aglow.  They  quench  the  soul  or  try  to.  Their  deadly  candle 
snuffers  make  a  stink  and  a  smudge  where  there  was  a 
struggling  tongue  of  fire  that  was  trying  to  light  a  little  sconce 
and  might  have  passed  its  light  along  until,  as  one  taper  often 
does,  it  set  all  the  candelabra  of  a  cathedral  ablaze. 

"Put  not  your  trust  in  princes,"  is  wisdom;  but  the  artists 
should  be  given  carte  blanche,  for  they  are  trustees  of  high 
emprise,  whose  only  hope  of  prosperity  is  in  the  enlighten- 
ment and  aliment  of  the  multitude.  Out  of  a  few  loaves  and 
fishes  they  make  a  miraculous  banquet ;  out  of  a  little  tallow 
and  a  piece  of  twine  they  make  a  radiance  for  an  altar. 
And  no  one  can  ever  know  what  he  does  when  he  whiffs  out 
the  least  of  these  candles.  Though  he  find  it  quivering  in 
some  dark,  forbidden  alley  of  the  labyrinth  of  human  life, 
it  may  point  out  a  pathway  to  sacred  relics  or  to  a  hidden 
spring  or  an  unexpected  stairway  to  the  sky. 

There  is  nothing  to  art  but  fire.  If  now  and  then  it 
blisters  or  scorches  an  unlucky  venturer,  the  total  of  its 
harmfulness  at  its  worst  is  contemptible  before  the  glory  of 
the  good  it  does.  Art,  like  the  sun,  is  blinding  and  perilous 
at  times,  but  it  is  our  one  hope. 

So  the  lean  and  ruthless  artist,  Randel,  who  had  sought 
beauty  at  all  hazards,  was  the  one  friend  Clelia's  father  and 
mother  had  now.  There  was  a  kind  of  ecstatic  laughter  in 
their  sobs  when  he  told  them  that  he  could  give  them  back 
so  much  of  the  Clelia  they  had  given  up  for  lost. 

Their  prodigal  girl  who  had  run  away  out  of  the  world  was 
only  teasing  them,  after  all.  She  would  come  again  to  their 
home  in  white  peace,  demure  and  content  and  forever  at  her 
little  prayers. 

Clelia's  mother  thought  only  of  this,  but  Clelia's  father  was 
thinking  also  of  the  other  thing  Randel  had  told  him — 
that  those  plaster  molds  contained  the  monument  of  the 
crime  against  her  child. 

Like  a  hawk  that  an  eagle  has  robbed  of  its  prey  and 
flung  to  earth  bleeding  and  bald  and  crippled,  he  renewed 


THE  ARTISTS  AND   THE  LAW   335 

himself  with  wrath.  He  grew  strong  again  slowly  in  the 
hope  of  revenge.  His  epithet  once  more  was  rapax. 

He  could  be  as  gentle  as  a  falcon  to  its  young  or  to  its 
mate,  but  he  was  restless  for  the  hunt.  When  his  wife  fell 
asleep  at  last,  wept  out  and  pacified  by  sheer  exhaustion,  her 
husband  stole  away  to  talk  to  the  detectives  and  the  re- 
porters who  had  drained  Madsen  and  Sheriff  Brummit  and 
everybody  else  of  all  they  knew  or  thought,  and  more. 

Madsen  had  indeed  been  subjected  to  an  almost  fatal 
strain  by  the  arrival  of  the  New  York  newspaper  men. 
Loyalty  to  his  own  press  association  counseled  him  to  keep 
his  story  secret  until  he  could  get  it  on  the  wires  first.  But 
he  burned  also  with  the  desire  to  shine  before  these  famous 
leaders  of  his  profession,  and  he  dealt  them  out  a  few  bits  of 
information  like  tips. 

Almost  any  man  or  woman  would  rather  dazzle  a  rival 
than  conquer  the  public.  And  gradually,  almost  uncon- 
sciously, Madsen  gave  up  all  he  knew  or  guessed.  He  was 
crudely  majestic  about  it.  But  the  reporters  wrote  down 
what  he  said  and  smiled  as  they  stole  his  goods.  Pioneers 
are  usually  bilked  by  the  second  line  of  advance. 

Madsen  warned  the  reporters  and  detectives  against 
Larrick  especially,  but  failed  to  fill  them  with  horror  when 
he  told  them  that  Larrick  had  actually  knocked  him  down — 
him — Archimedes's  own  lever  lifter !  The  reporters  laughed 
as  they  nodded  good-by  to  Madsen  when  the  train  pulled  out. 
But  he  felt  like  a  man  marooned.  Another  century  might 
pass  in  that  village  before  such  another  story  "broke." 
The  winter  promised  to  be  as  lonely  long  as  a  century. 

Madsen  had  tried  to  persuade  Sheriff  Brummit  to  arrest  or 
otherwise  detain  Larrick,  Randel,  and  Miss  Fleet.  The 
sheriff  would  have  been  glad  to  hold  such  picturesque  guests, 
but  he  had  not  found  evidence  enough  to  cast  a  worthy 
suspicion  on  anybody,  to  say  nothing  of  clanging  an  iron 
door.  Besides,  the  village  jail  was  not  furnished  for  the 
comfort  of  swell  prisoners,  especially  in  winter. 

Furthermore,  the  metropolitan  detectives  and  the  reporters 
had  pooh-poohed  the  suggestion.  Madsen  insisted  that  this 
was  because  they  wanted  to  get  all  the  criminals  down  to 


336  BEAUTY 

N'York  City  for  their  own  consumption.     Madsen,  like 
many  another  outlander,  was  jealous  of  N'York  City. 

And  he  was  very  jealous  of  this  crime.  It  was  beginning 
to  look  to  him  like  a  private  murder  of  his  own  copyright. 
Brummit  was  goaded  at  last  into  a  sarcasm : 

"Young  eller,  you  better  watch  out  or  first  you  know 
you'll  be  goin'  round  claimin"  you  committed  the  murder 
yourself.  Then  we'll  have  to  commit  you." 

In  the  meanwhile  there  was  equal  futility  in  the  discus- 
sions among  the  passengers  in  Mr.  Blakeney's  private  car. 
Some  of  the  reporters  sourly  prophesied  that  the  mystery- 
would  never  be  solved.  In  New  York  City  with  all  its 
compactness,  its  countless  array  of  eyes  and  ears,  and  its 
vast  mechanism  of  police,  dozens  of  murders  had  recently 
been  added  to  the  file  of  unsolved  mysteries.  What  hope 
was  there  of  explaining  this  death  at  night  in  the  solitude  of 
the  mountains  followed  upon  by  a  furious  storm  that, 
like  a  deft  accomplice,  tore  up  every  shred  of  evidence, 
erased  every  footprint? 

In  the  long,  slow  hours  of  the  train's  fleet  passage  there 
was  time  for  every  theory  to  be  heard. 

Larrick  sat  and  listened  and  rarely  spoke.  He  was 
reminded  of  the  discussion  that  had  flourished  in  the  camp 
before  he  found  Clelia  in  the  ice. 

The  easy  explanat  on  recurred,  that  she  was  self-slain. 
The  answer  to  that  was  her  character.  These  reporters  and 
detectives  did  not  know  her.  They  could  believe  her 
capable  of  flinging  away  this  world  which  was  to  her  such 
a  toy  of  endless  delight,  a  return  ball  on  a  rubber  string  that 
she  would  only  toss  aside  for  the  privilege  of  catching  it 
back  again. 

The  newspapers  would  play  up  all  the  grisly  possibilities 
of  mad  fiends  loose  in  the  mountains  and  of  mysterious 
scandals  among  the  rich,  whose  scandals  are  such  a  comfort 
to  the  poor.  But  the  reporters  agreed  among  themselves 
that  the  girl  had  killed  herself  in  some  fit  of  blues  or  greens. 

Larrick  would  not  share  his  own  suspicions  with  the 
detectives  or  the  reporters.  He  was  determined  to  follow 
his  own  trails.  He  had  tracked  cattle  thieves  through  the 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    337 

desert  by  little  signs  that  he  had  learned;  and  he  had  learned 
to  keep  his  theories  to  himself. 

There  were  two  men  that  he  was  trailing.  If  they  had 
fled  the  city  he  would  hound  them  around  the  globe.  If 
they  were  still  in  New  York  he  would  fasten  them  to  their 
chairs  and  rummage  their  very  souls. 

When  the  train  stopped  at  the  13 8th  Street  station,  un- 
expectedly, Norry  Frewin  came  into  the  car.  His  haggard 
look,  the  fierce  wringing  he  gave  Larrick's  hand,  his  rush  to 
Clelia's  parents — these  things  staggered  Larrick,  for  they 
seemed  to  absolve  the  man  before  he  could  be  accused. 

It  was  Norry  that  had  stopped  the  train  at  13 8th  Street. 
He  explained  to  Mr.  Blakeney  that  a  mob  of  reporters  and 
photographers  had  been  waiting  at  the  Grand  Central 
Station  for  hours.  By  leaving  the  train  at  this  small  and 
little-frequented  suburban  stop  the  gantlet  would  be  avoided. 
He  had  even  arranged  that  motor  cars  should  be  waiting  in 
the  street  to  hurry  them  to  the  comparative  privacy  of  their 
own  home. 

When  the  Blakeneys  thanked  Norry  with  surprise  for  the 
trouble  he  had  taken,  Larrick  heard  him  murmur: 

"I  had  always  expected  to  be  a  member  of  your  family 
some  day,  but  now — " 

He  turned  away  and  came  back  to  Larrick. 


CHAPTER  X 

NOTHING  is  more  hateful  than  a  decent  action  in  one 
that  we  have  fondly  hated.  Some  people  are  easy  and 
earnest  haters,  but  the  average  amiable  soul  finds  it  hard 
to  get  together  enough  enemies  to  keep  himself  warm. 
Enemies  are  constantly  slipping  away  from  one,  particularly 
in  these  days  when  science  is  proving  so  much  more  merciful 
and  forgiving  than  any  religion  ever  was. 

Norry  Frewin,  as  the  murderer  of  Clelia,  was  a  personage 
for  Larrick  to  look  forward  to  with  hope  and  a  kind  of 
respect.  But  to  find  him  crushed  with  grief,  solicitous  for 
the  girl's  parents,  and  fairly  craven  with  innocence — this 
struck  one  of  Larrick's  crutches  out  from  under  him. 

The  only  strength  Norry  showed  was  in  his  stubborn 
insistence  that  Larrick  should  come  home  with  him  instead 
of  going  to  a  hotel.  The  Frewins  had  reopened  their  town 
house,  and  Norry  said  that  his  father  and  mother  would  be 
bitterly  hurt  if  their  "son"  Larrick  did  not  come  back  to 
them.  So  Larrick  yielded,  but  with  regret.  He  saw  that 
the  curse  of  hospitality  would  hamper  him.  How  could  he 
live  in  the  Frewin  home  and  try  to  fasten  a  crime  on  the 
beloved  heir  of  his  hosts? 

He  felt  a  sudden  disgust  of  the  whole  ugly  business  of 
revenge.  What  would  he  not  do  to  bring  Clelia  back  to  life  ? 
He  would  slaughter  anyone  for  that  exchange  with  death. 
But  to  slay  somebody  to  appease  her  ghost  would  do  her 
no  good.  It  would  be  as  bloodily  silly  as  the  old  habit  of 
slaying  hecatombs  at  the  tombs  of  the  dead.  And  Clelia 
had  not  even  a  tomb. 

On  the  motor  ride  to  the  Frewin  home  Larrick  was  sur- 
prised to  find  how  little  the  winter  had  touched  New  York. 
It  had  dealt  so  cruelly  with  him  that  he  expected  to  find  the 
world  in  a  state  of  white  siege.  But  New  York  had  no 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    339 

snow  now  and  the  air  was  full  of  balm.  Central  Park,  as  they 
ran  down  its  upper  region,  was  green,  and  Fifth  Avenue 
was  as  glossy  and  brimful  of  riotous  luxury  as  if  death  had 
never  been  and  never  would  be.  Young  girls  of  much  the 
same  model  and  radiance  as  Clelia  ran  their  own  cars,  rode, 
wind  blown,  on  the  tops  of  the  busses  wabbling  like  green 
ferryboats,  or  swung  along  the  sidewalks  past  gleaming 
mirror  windows  that  offered  them  their  own  images  as  well 
as  the  enticements  within — as  if  just  such  a  girl  had  never 
been  snatched  out  of  the  world. 

Larrick's  eyes  regarded  the  carnival  as  something  heinous, 
unforgivably  heartless. 

Fortunately  the  Frewin  home  was  reached  before  he  had 
much  of  this  mocking  to  endure.  Mr.  Frewin  was  at  his 
office,  but  Mrs.  Frewin  greeted  him  with  motherliness. 
She  was  suffering  for  Norry's  loss  of  Clelia,  and  she  did  not 
know  that  Larrick  felt  even  more  bereaved. 

Norry  cut  short  his  mother's  visit  and  hurried  Larrick  to 
his  room,  where  he  demanded  a  continuation  of  the  story 
Larrick  had  told  him  on  the  way  down. 

Larrick  was  more  eager  to  ask  questions  than  to  answer 
them,  but  Norry's  very  curiosity  was  in  itself  a  denial  of 
Larrick's  unspoken  suspicions. 

Norry  flung  on  a  table  a  heap  of  newspapers  with  Clelia's 
name  and  picture  everywhere  upon  them  in  blotches  of  type : 

"See  what  the  fiends  are  doing  with  my  darling,"  he 
groaned.  "Nearly  everything  is  lies, and  what  is  true  they 
have  no  right  to  print.  But  what  can  we  do  to  protect  her? 
Tell  me  the  truth." 

Larrick  told  him  all  that  he  knew,  but  he  could  not  confess 
the  wrath  he  had  felt  toward  Norry.  He  let  his  hatred 
slip  from  him  reluctantly  and  acquitted  him  with  regret. 
But  abruptly  Norry  woke  his  suspicions  again  by  an  outburst : 

"I'm  really  to  blame  for  Clelia's  death." 

Larrick's  hand  clenched  on  Norry's  arm  with  frenzy. 
1 '  What  do  you  mean  by  that  ? " 

Norry  was  too  deep  in  his  own  brooding  to  catch  the  spirit 
of  Larrick's  words. 

"I  always  adored  Clelia.     She  was  my  first  sweetheart, 


340  BEAUTY 

and  she  always  liked  me,  but  she  never  could  seem  to  love 
me." 

This  strangely  gave  Larrick  a  comfort,  an  unworthy  one, 
but  perhaps  the  more  soothing.  Norry  went  on : 

"She  might  have  come  to  love  me  in  time,  but  she  was 
slow  growing  up — as  a  woman,  I  mean.  She  was  like  a  wild 
young  boy  who  makes  fun  of  love,  thinks  it  trash,  doesn't 
know  what  it's  all  about.  I  don't  believe  she  ever  knew  a 
real  temptation  or  ever  kissed  a  man  with  warm  lips." 

Larrick  shivered.  It  was  uncanny  and  accursed  to  talk 
of  the  sex  of  the  dead.  He  remembered  that  canoe  voyage 
he  took  with  Clelia  and  how  near  they  were  to  the  abyss; 
how  she  peered  over  dizzily  and  felt  all  the  impulse  to  go 
forward  that  people  feel  at  the  precipice'  edge.  Larrick 
had  held  her  back  instead  of  leaping  into  the  pit  with  her. 
And  now  she  would  never  know  a  pang  of  desire  again,  and 
never  know  at  all  the  supreme  rapture  of  the  flesh.  Larrick 
wondered  whether  this  were  a  cause  for  gratitude  or  for 
utter  regret.  With  the  heaven  of  the  pure  in  heart  before 
her  it  was  well  that  she  had  never  sinned;  yet  in  that 
heaven  there  would  be  no  flesh,  and  all  her  growth  to  earthly 
perfection  had  been  but  a  vanity,  a  flower  that  froze  just  as 
it  bloomed. 

But  Norry's  talk  trampled  down  his  reveries. 

"Clelia  never  knew  what  passion  means.  But  she  in- 
spired it  in  me — it  seems  a  crime  to  speak  of  it — or  think  of 
it  now.  But  she  drove  me  almost  mad — and  other  men,  too. 
Coykendall,  for  instance. 

"I  wanted  to  kill  him  when  I  saw  him  watching  her, 
gloating  over  her  in  her  light  costumes,  daring  to  think  of 
her  as  a  woman.  And  when  I  saw  her  dancing  in  his  arms, 
well,  I  had  to  talk  to  myself  to  keep  from  actual  murder. 

"Then  I  realized  how  I  felt  when  I  watched  her,  how  I 
burned  when  she  was  in  my  arms.  It's  a  fearful  thing  to 
abominate  another  man  for  certain  traits  and  then  find  them 
in  yourself. 

"But  I  could  always  forgive  myself,  and  I  couldn't  excuse 
Coykendall.  That  last  night  on  the  piazza. — you  remember 
how  we  quarreled?  I  saw  her  dancing  with  Coykendall. 


THE  ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    341 

The  moonlight  was  so  bright  I  could  read  his  eyes.  And 
it  seemed  to  me  that  Clelia  was  yielding  to  his  influence,  or 
the  moon's.  Anyway,  I  imagined  that  he  was  winning  her 
to  his  own  way  of  thinking. 

"When  the  Victrola  record  gave  out  and  the  dance 
stopped  they  walked  away  and  whispered  together,  and  I 
felt  as  lonely  as  if  I  were  a  castaway  in  the  open  sea.  I 
couldn't  help  edging  closer  and  I  heard  him  murmuring 
to  her,  asking  her  to  walk  with  him  to  the  shore  of  the 
lake.  'It's  our  last  chance,'  he  said,  'before  the  blizzard 
strikes  it  and  freezes  it,  and,  besides,  we  leave  to-morrow 
morning.' 

"I  heard  him  say  that,  and  I  waited  to  see  what  she  would 
say.  And  she  laughed,  'All  right.'  I  thought  her  voice 
broke  a  little  nervously.  I  went  blind  with  rage,  and  just 
as  they  were  leaving  the  porch  I  stepped  forward  and 
grabbed  Coykendall  by  the  arm  and  I  said, '  Coyky,  you  try 
to  take  Clelia  away  from  this  piazza,  and  you'll  never  know 
what  struck  you.'  And  then  the  hot  words  started.  He  was 
afraid  of  me,  but  Clelia  wasn't.  She  was  never  afraid  of 
anybody.  She  said  she  could  take  care  of  herself,  thank  you, 
and  if  I  were  such  a  caretaker  I  could  go  back  to  New  York 
and  take  care  of  the  girl  that  was  looking  for  me. 

"I  assumed  that  Coykendall  must  have  found  out  about 
that  affair,  and  I  said,  'We're  all  going  back  to  New  York 
to-morrow,  but  you  can't  go  out  there  with  Coykendall.' 
And  she  said,  '  And  why  not  ? '  And  I  said,  '  Because  he's  a 
yellow  dog !'  And  she  said,  '  What  kind  of  a  yellow  animal 
are  you?'  or  something  crazy  like  that.  We  weren't  very 
brilliant,  and  the  only  repartee  I  could  think  of  was  to 
invite  Coykendall  to  come  down  to  the  lake  with  me  and 
I'd  drown  him  there.  Coykendall  was  all  for  a  quiet  life 
and  he  backed  away.  But  Clelia  was  white  with  anger,  and 
our  voices  rose  till  Mrs.  Roantree  came  out  and  sent  us  all 
to  our  rooms  in  disgrace." 

Frewin  fell  silent  at  this  point  in  his  bitter  recollections, 
till  Larrick  recalled  him  with  an  impatient  question: 

"But  you  said  that  you  were  to  blame  for  Clelia's  death. 
What  did  you  mean  by  that?" 


342  BEAUTY 

"I  meant  that  if  I  had  been  truer  to  Clelia  she  might  have 
married  me — or  loved  me,  at  least.  Her  beauty  set  me  on 
fire,  but  she  refused  to  love  or  let  love.  So  I  told  her  one 
day  that  I'd  find  somebody  with  a  heart.  She  only  laughed. 
I  tried  to  make  her  jealous.  But  she  had  no  jealousy  in  her 
— at  least  none  of  me.  Or  she  saw  through  the  game. 
Anyway,  she  only  made  fun  of  me. 

"I  could  never  stand  her  laughing  at  me.  Love  was  no 
joke  to  me.  I  was  mad  about  her,  crazy  for  her.  She 
wouldn't  even  pretend  to  love  me,  but  she  made  me  so 
hungry  for  love  that  finally  I  went  after  it — elsewhere — like 
a  drunkard  who  sees  champagne  and  can't  reach  it  and  goes 
after  cheap  whisky. 

"There  was  a  pretty  fool  I  met,  who  hadn't  CleKa's 
beauty,  but  had  all  the — the  fire  that  Clelia  lacked.  And 
she — it  sounds  idiotically  conceited — but  she  loved  me  as 
desperately  as  Clelia  didn't.  She  was  as  easy  as  Clelia  was 
impossible.  She  pursued  me  as  I  pursued  Clelia.  I  ran 
away  as  Clelia  did  and  this  girl  followed  me.  She  was  one  of 
those  that  sin  in  a  minute  and  repent  forever — easy  stum- 
biers,  but  slow  on  the  recovery.  Repent  and  repeat. 

"That  day,  you  remember,  when  you  came  to  my  apart- 
ment as  Clelia  was  just  leaving  the  door,  Clelia  had  called 
just  out  of  pure  deviltry  to  tease  me  and  shock  me,  because 
I  never  wanted  her  to  be  anything  but  what  was  proper  and 
circumspect.  For  I  was  always  a  stickler  for  appearances 
even  at  my  worst,  and  Clelia  never  cared  a  rap  for  them, 
for  she  had  nothing  to  conceal.  As  hell  would  have  it,  that 
other  girl  had  forced  her  way  into  my  place  just  a  little  before 
Clelia  rang  my  bell. 

"When  I  opened  the  door  Clelia  saw  her  hat  in  the  hall 
and  ran  away,  laughing  like  mad.  But  from  then  on  she 
wouldn't  even  tease  me  any  more.  She  abhorred  me. 
She  felt  that  I  was  unclean,  treacherous  to  the  love  that 
would  some  day  have  come  to  us.  At  least  I  think  so,  I 
hope  so. 

"But  she'd  never  listen  to  an  apology.  She  laughed,  but 
it  was  a  hurt  laugh.  She  realized  a  phase  of  me  that  she  had 
never  understood  before,  the  man  of  me.  I  broke  her  faith 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    343 

in  the  world — or  at  least  in  me.  That  was  the  day  she 
woke  to  the  ugliness  of  life,  as  it  is  really  lived. 

"  I  blamed  the  other  girl  and  threw  her  out,  chucked  her, 
never  would  see  her  again,  any  more  than  Clelia  would  see 
me.  The  poor  wretch  wept  and  pleaded  over  the  telephone 
and  hounded  me  just  as  I  had  hounded  Clelia.  I  took  you 
up  to  the  farm  to  get  out  of  her  reach. 

"And  then  one  day  I  got  a  telephone  message  from  her 
lawyer  that  she  was  going  to  sue  me  for  breach  of  promise 
and  all  sorts  of  things.  That  was  why  I  went  to  town  so 
suddenly.  I  met  Burnley,  the  painter,  and  told  him  my 
trouble  and  he  said  he  was  on  his  way  to  Mrs.  Roantree's 
and  that  Clelia  was  to  be  there.  He  told  me  that  she  had 
begged  Mrs.  Roantree  not  to  invite  me.  That  made  me 
desperate. 

"I  had  no  money  to  quiet  the  other  girl,  and  I  didn't  dare 
ask  my  father.  My  lawyer  advised  me  just  to  disappear 
for  a  while  and  see  if  the  storm  wouldn't  blow  over.  And 
that's  how  I  came  to  take  you  up  to  the  Adirondacks,  for  one 
last  desperate  try  for  Clelia.  And  there  Coykendall  was, 
playing  on  her  sympathies,  playing  on  her  nerves,  slowly 
teaching  her  his  kind  of  love.  Thank  God  she  escaped 
that! 

"If  I  had  only  been  patient  a  little  while  longer  with 
Clelia,  and  truer  to  her,  she  might  have  come  to  love  me. 
Then  she  wouldn't  have  gone  to  the  mountains  to  get  out  of 
my  reach.  She  wouldn't  have  listened  to  Coykendall,  she 
wouldn't  have  been  interested  in  such  scum.  And  he 
wouldn't  have  killed  her." 

Larrick  was  astounded  to  hear  his  own  thought  spoken  by 
another's  voice. 

"You  think  he  killed  her?" 

"Who  else  could  have?  When  I  wouldn't  let  him  take 
Clelia  for  a  walk  in  the  moonlight  that  night  and  she  was 
sent  to  her  room  I  believe  she  was  just  in  the  mood  for  mis- 
chief. I  believe  that  he  slipped  out  and  tapped  at  her 
window,  and  begged  her — or,  more  likely,  dared  her  to  come 
out.  And  she  did!" 

Larrick's  adoration  revolted  at  this. 


344  BEAUTY 

"But  she  wouldn't  have  gone  out  to  him  dressed  like 
that." 

Norry  hated  even  to  admit  the  possibility,  but  he  groaned : 

"She  did  go  out  like  that,  didn't  she?  She  was  found  so. 
You  see,  Clelia  had  no  sense  of — of  indecency.  You  saw 
what  she  swam  in.  She  hated  the  sham  of  clothes,  and  the 
prudery  of  people.  She  was  like  Eve.  The  scales  hadn't 
fallen  from  her  eyes.  For  all  her  knowledge,  she  didn't 
really  know  the  world. 

"What  else  is  there  to  believe  but  that  she  ran  out  on  the 
impulse  just  as  she  was?  Then  maybe — it  must  have  been 
so — he  thought  her  mood  was  the  same  as  his.  And  when 
she  understood  she  must  have  tried  to  run  away  from  him. 
She  may  have  screamed  for  help,  and  none  of  us  heard  her. 

"  I  can  see  him  pursuing  Clelia.  He  must  have  gone  mad. 
He  couldn't  overpower  her,  I  suppose.  She  was  strong  as  a 
panther,  and  he  always  was  a  weakling.  So  he  must  have 
taken  some  weapon,  and  finally — you  say  her  hands  were 
at  prayer  and  her  forehead  wounded.  He  must  have 
struck  her  dead.  And  then  he  became  the  coward  he 
always  was.  Then  he  flung  her  into  the  water  and  slipped 
back  into  the  house." 

The  picture  was  as  vivid  in  Larrick's  vision  as  any  night- 
mare. It  repelled  his  powers  of  belief,  yet  people  were 
always  getting  murdered.  And  he  had  seen  the  wound  in 
Clelia's  brow.  He  reasoned  no  longer.  He  spoke  with 
hoarse  fury: 

"Where's  Coykendall?" 

"I  don't  know.     I've  looked  for  him  everywhere." 

"Why  did  you  let  him  get  away  from  the  train?" 

"When  we  left  the  mountains  none  of  us  knew  or  dreamed 
that  Clelia  was  not  alive.  We  were  all  talking  about  her. 
Coykendall  was  very  nervous,  but  I  supposed  that  he  was 
simply  fidgety  because  she  wasn't  along.  We  supposed  she 
had  stayed  behind  with  you.  And  we  both  cursed  you. 

"I  never  learned  what  had  happened  till  'Clelia's  father 
called  me  up  and  told  me  he  had  had  a  telegram  from  Mrs. 
Roantree  saying  that  Clelia  was  mysteriously  drowned  and 
wounded. 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    345 

"I  went  almost  mad.  I  wanted  to  go  up  on  the  private 
train — but  it  got  away  before  I  knew  it.  Then  the  news- 
papers came  out  with  the  horrible  stories  of  the  ice,  and 
they've  never  rested  since.  I  didn't  know  what  to  think 
till  they  began  to  hint  at  murder. 

"Then  I  thought  of  Coykendall  and  I  saw  his  behavior  in 
the  train  in  a  new  light,  and  I  went  to  look  for  him.  But 
he  was  not  to  be  found.  I  even  went  to  his  lawyer.  But 
the  lawyer  was  out  of  town  on  some  errand  his  office 
people  wouldn't  explain. 

"I  was  so  desperate  I  went  to  Mrs.  Coykendall's  house. 
And  she  was  out  of  town!  I  can't  imagine  what  has  hap- 
pened to  all  of  them." 

Larrick  rose  and  flung  his  head  up  like  a  bloodhound 
howling  along  a  trail.  He  cried: 

'Til  find  him!" 

Then  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door.  Norry  flung  it  open 
and  the  Frewin  butler  spoke: 

"Is  Mr.  Larrick  there?  Ah  yes.  You're  wanted  on  the 
phone,  sir,  if  you  please." 

"Who  wants  me?" 

"Mr.  Coykendall,  sir." 


CHAPTER  XI 

'T'HE  one  thing  Coykendall  could  have  done  to  satisfy 
1  Larrick  would  have  been  to  permit  Larrick  to  run  him 
down  and  then  wring  from  him  a  confession  that  he  had 
murdered  Clelia. 

The  one  thing  Coykendall  could  have  done  to  render 
Larrick  desperate  was  to  rob  him  of  his  last  working  theory. 
And  that  was  what  Coykendall  chose  to  do. 

When  Larrick  and  Frewin  heard  his  name  mentioned  and 
realized  that  he  was  actually  asking  for  Larrick,  who  was 
just  starting  on  a  still  hunt  for  him,  they  looked  at  each 
other  and  gave  him  up.  Very  reluctantly  they  acquitted 
him  of  guilt  before  they  heard  his  case.  If  Coykendall  had 
committed  a  crime  he  would  never  have  tried  to  bluff  it  out ; 
he  would  have  fled  and  hidden. 

When  Larrick  answered  the  telephone  with  all  the  bitter- 
ness of  accumulated  wrath  Coykendall  began  to  shower 
questions  on  him  about  Clelia.  He  had  just  seen  the 
newspapers,  he  said. 

Larrick  sent  a  tentative  lasso  after  him  when  he  answered : 

"I  don't  like  to  talk  that  subject  over  the  phone.  Where 
can  we  meet?" 

"I'll  run  right  up  there,  if  you  say,"  said  Coykendall, 
ignorant  of  the  staggering  effect  of  his  words. 

Larrick  agreed  for  the  sake  of  coming  to  close  quarters 
with  him. 

While  they  waited,  Norry  and  Larrick  discussed  him. 
They  had  always  found  him  poltroon,  and  now  there  seemed 
to  be  something  sneaking  in  his  very  innocence. 

They  watched  from  a  window  and  saw  him  swing  to  the 
curb  in  his  racing  car,  leap  out,  and  run  up  the  steps.  He 
was  already  talking  when  he  caught  sight  of  them. 

He  seized  Larrick's  hand  and  clung  to  it,  babbling: 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    347 

"Tell  me  about  Clelia.  What  in  the  name  of —  How 
could —  My  God!  it's  unbelievable." 

"When  did  you  find  out?"  Larrick  asked,  coldly. 

"I  haven't  found  out  yet.  I  don't  know  what  hap- 
pened." 

"You're  the  only  man  in  the  country  that  doesn't  know, 
then.  Didn't  you  read  the  papers?" 

"I've  read  them  all.  That's  why  I  don't  know  what 
happened.  The  first  one  was  very  definite.  But  the  others 
all  contradicted  one  another.  Tell  me  the  truth." 

"Where  have  you  been?"  Norry  demanded.  "I've  tried 
to  find  you  everywhere.  I've  even  tried  to  find  your 
wife." 

"We  went  up  to  a  little  up-state  town." 

"Together?" 

"Yes,  to  get  a  divorce  and  keep  out  of  the  papers.  I  gave 
her  the  evidence." 

"Yes,  you  did!"  Larrick  snarled,  glad  of  an  excuse  for 
denouncing  him.  "You  gave  it  to  her  after  you  threatened 
her  with  disgrace  if  she  didn't  accept  it.  How  in  the 
name  of  all  hell  could  you  have  got  hold  of  that  slimy 
lizard  that  compromised  her  and  confessed — kissed  and 
told  lies  about  it?  How  did  that  animal  come  to  tell  you 
about  it?" 

"Why,  I  hired  him  in  the  first  place,"  Coykendall  ex- 
claimed. The  matter  of  his  divorce  was  casual  with  him — a 
page  torn  out  of  his  diary. 

"You  hired  a  man  to  make  love  to  your  wife  and  then 
make  an  affidavit  that  she  was  guilty  of — of — " 

"I  didn't  intend  to  use  it.  I  only  wanted  to  make  my 
wife  listen  to  reason." 

"To  reason!    You  yellow-bellied  snipe,  you — " 

"Well,  call  me  what  you  want  to.  I  didn't  love  my  wife 
any  more.  I  couldn't  help  it.  I  told  her  so.  I  begged  her 
to  let  me  go,  but  she  wouldn't.  The  laws  of  New  York  are 
so  damned  strict  that  there's  only  one  ground  for  a  divorce. 
She  would  never  have  given  me  that  ground;  she  never 
would  pay  any  attention  to  any  grounds  I  gave  her.  It's 
all  the  fault  of  these  rotten  laws  that  try  to  chain  a  man 

and  woman  together  when  their  hearts  are  dead  and  when 
23 


348  BEAUTY 

love  has  turned  to  disgust.  It's  indecent  and  they  call  it 
religion  and  the  home  and — rot!" 

"As  long  as  your  wife  could  stand  it,  why  did  you  have  to 
throw  her  out?" 

"I  was  madly  in  love  with  Clelia,  and — " 

Both  men,  both  lovers  of  Clelia,  gave  such  a  start  of  fury 
that  Coykendall  checked  himself. 

"Well,  I — anyway,  my  wife  refused  to  let  me  go.  She 
was  like  a  woman  that  drags  a  man  down  when  he's  trying 
to  save  her.  He  can  swim,  she  can't.  If  she'll  let  go,  both 
will  live.  If  she  won't,  then  both  will  drown.  Well,  I  tore 
my  wife's  hands  free.  That's  all." 

"But  this  hired  man  of  yours,  who  swore  to  such  lies  about 
her — where  could  you  find  such  a — a —  What  is  there  to 
call  him?" 

"Why,  he  was  a  private  detective.  There  are  lots  like 
him.  These  strict  divorce  laws  make  their  business  and  a 
million  other  scandals.  I  told  them  my  story.  They  said 
they  could  manage  it.  And  they  did." 

"And  you  introduced  that  detective  in  your  home — to 
your  wife — as  your  friend?  You  left  them  alone? " 

The  very  thoughts  were  like  vomit  in  Larrick's  mouth. 

"  That  was  better  than  murdering  her,  wasn't  it  ? "  Coyken- 
dall cried.  ' '  I  didn't  do  her  any  harm.  She's  a  good  woman. 
She  loved  me  and  couldn't  stop.  She's  built  that  way. 
I'm  built  my  way.  She  gets  credit  for  being  a  saint  and  I'm 
a  cad.  Well,  all  right,  I'm  a  God-made  cad.  I  can't  love  a 
woman  just  because  she's  good  or  just  because  she  loves  me. 
You  may  be  able  to.  I  can't.  I'm  not  built  that  way. 
It's  not  my  fault.  I  never  could  love  anybody  more  than 
so  long  and — I'm  just  as  sorry  about  it  as  anybody.  But 
I  can't  help  it.  It  seems  as  if  there  had  to  be  just  so  many 
snobs  and  cads  in  the  world,  and  I  drew  one  of  the  tickets 
in  the  lottery.  It  hasn't  made  me  happy.  I've  been 
miserable.  I  hate  myself  for  it.  I'm  ashamed  of  myself. 
But  I  couldn't  help  it.  If  you've  got  to  blame  somebody, 
blame  God,  not  me. 

"I  never  had  any  stability.  I  didn't  when  I  was  a  child. 
I  never  shall  have.  A  fellow  can't  make  himself  a  hero  by 
just  wanting  to.  Clelia  would  have  been  the  one  love  of  my 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    349 

life.  She  understood  me  and  felt  sorry  for  me  and  defended 
me  from  everybody's  contempt.  I  really  loved  her.  She 
could  have  kept  me  true — and  now,  she — " 

He  winced  again  lest  they  beat  him  for  letting  her  name 
slip  out  once  more.  He  was  trembling,  but  not  quite  sobbing ; 
his  wet  eyes  were  rolling  this  way  and  that,  furtively.  He 
was  a  wretched  object,  like  a  fox  caught  in  a  trap,  running 
to  and  fro  and  dragging  the  clinking  chain,  hurt  and  ready 
to  snap,  but  still  shifty  and  helplessly  elusive. 

Larrick  and  Frewin,  with  all  their  own  tricks  to  be 
ashamed  of,  abominated  his  tricks  because  they  were  not 
theirs. 

It  is  strange  how  partial  forgiveness  is.  We  forgive  and 
admire  the  lion  and  the  leopard  and  the  grizzly  bear,  the 
Caesars  and  Napoleons,  the  prize  fighters  and  the  thugs. 
But  we  loathe  the  snake,  the  rat,  the  fox,  though  they  are 
driven  through  the  world  by  instincts  they  did  not  select. 
The  mouse  might  well  wish  to  be  a  lion,  but  he  remains  a 
mouse. 

There  is  a  pathos  about  disloyalty  that  is  somehow  either 
over  our  heads  or  beneath  our  hearts.  Anyway,  it  evades 
us.  The  Benedict  Arnolds,  the  Judases,  the  congenital 
traitors  suffer  a  helpless  remorse  before  and  after  their 
perfidies.  They  simmer  and  fry  in  the  hells  of  their  own 
shame  and  the  public  contempt.  But  how  shall  they  escape 
their  natures? 

We  forgive  people  for  other  deformities.  We  help  the 
blind  across  the  street.  We  temper  our  voices  to  the  deaf. 
We  coddle  the  lame,  the  sick,  the  insane,  the  hot  tempered, 
the  illiterate,  the  inartistic. 

We  forgive  people  for  most  of  their  physical  and  mental 
poverties.  But  there  are  a  few  traits  that  we  damn  incon- 
tinently, and  their  victims  with  them. 

We  speak  of  the  quicksands  as  treacherous,  but  how  can 
they  help  it  if  they  cannot  support  the  weight  of  the  pil- 
grim? How  can  they  help  looking  like  other  sands  or 
smothering  those  who  crush  them  apart? 

What  an  ugly  industry  it  is,  this  whole  commerce  in 
blame!  We  are  all  critics,  damners  of  other  people's  souls. 
And  we  find  a  sense  of  superiority  in  it,  though  nothing 


350  BEAUTY 

human  is  so  contemptible  as  contempt.  There  are  even 
men  who  make  a  trade,  a  profession  of  it,  and  yelp  across 
pulpits  and  editorial  desks  ignorant  ruthlessnesses  in  the 
name  of  a  God  who,  according  to  them,  has  little  other 
business  in  eternity  but  eavesdropping,  despising,  and  dis- 
tributing punishments,  a  rurmer-in  for  an  incredible  hotel 
called  hell! 

Larrick  could  have  killed  Coykendall  in  anger.  He 
could  have  turned  him  over  to  justice  in  cold  blood.  But 
he  could  not  punish  a  weakling  who  took  refuge  in  his  own 
weakness  as  in  a  martyrdom.  A  tomato  worm  cannot 
be  anything  else,  and  a  man  cannot  but  feel  reluctance  to 
crush  it.  He  took  refuge  from  his  own  weakness  in  a  flare 
of  rage. 

"Why  don't  you  go  back  to  your  wife?  She's  the  only 
person  on  earth  who  likes  you." 

"That's  not  true.     Clelia— " 

The  name  rang  upon  the  air.  Larrick's  fists  clenched, 
but  he  could  not  strike.  He  was  shackled  by  the  memory 
of  Clelia's  defense  of  Coykendall.  She  had  warned  him  not 
to  try  to  gain  her  favor  by  abusing  Coykendall.  There  was 
something  angelic  in  her  tolerance.  Frewin  had  run  across 
that  warning  of  hers,  too.  Her  mystic  hands  seemed  to 
reach  out  from  somewhere  to  shelter  this  pest,  this  caterpillar. 

Besides,  both  Frewin  and  Larrick  were  utterly  convinced 
that  Coykendall  had  not  harmed  her — could  not  have  slain 
her.  They  liked  him  none  the  better  for  taking  away  their 
last  excuse  for  venting  their  jealousies  upon  him. 

He  began  to  demand  the  truth  about  Clelia's  tragedy. 
Larrick  answered  his  frantic  queries  without  courtesy, 
evasively  from  disgust  of  the  man.  And  by  and  by  both  he 
and  Frewin  saw  that  Coykendall  was  questioning  them  with 
a  kind  of  suspicion  that  they  might  be  no  more  guiltless  than 
they  had  thought  him.  And,  indeed,  circumstances  involved 
them  as  much  as  him.  Larrick  remembered  Madsen's 
doubts  and  insinuations. 

The  intolerable  ignominy  of  Coykendall 's  suspicion  gave 
Larrick  the  impetus  he  needed.  He  broke  off  the  parley 
with  a  sharp  snap : 

"Coykendall,  I  don't  know  what  your  wife  sees  in  you  to 


THE   ARTISTS   AND    THE   LAW    351 

love.  But  you're  one  of  those  queer  animals  that  women  do 
love.  Maybe  you've  got  the  secret  of  winning  them. 
Maybe  it's  because  you  are  so  helpless  and  shiftless  and  no 
'count  generally  that  you  appeal  to  the  mother  in  them 
and  they  take  you  to  raise.  You  make  them  feel  superior, 
kind  of,  and  that's  the  way  you  trap  'em.  Then  as  soon 
as  you've  got  'em,  I  reckon,  you  lose  interest.  Maybe  you'd 
have  played  on  Clelia  the  same  way  if  she  had  lived." 

"Oh  no!     No!     Not  Clelia.     I  adored  her!" 

"You  say  that  because  she  got  away.  She  was  the  one 
you  never  caught,  and  maybe  it  was  just  as  well  that  she 
died.  I  couldn't  imagine  her  breaking  her  heart  over  you — 
but  I  saw  a  picture  of  your  wife  when  she — before  she  went  to 
that  face  surgeon,  and  she  was  mighty  handsome,  too." 

"Oh  yes,  she  was  beautiful  then.  I  was  mad  about  her — 
then." 

"She's  cursed  with  loyalty  and  loving  only  once,  just  as 
you're  cursed  with  disloyalty  and  loving  often.  She  sacri- 
ficed her  beauty  to  hold  you.  And  she  lost  everything.  I 
reckon  maybe  you  d  best  go  back  to  her." 

"Why,  I  just  gave  her  a  divorce." 

"She'll  give  it  back  again." 

"You  must  be  insane." 

"Well,  supposin' I  am.  As  you  say,  I  can't  help  it.  You 
couldn't  blame  me  if  I  told  the  judge  what  you  told  me. 
That  would  bust  up  the  divorce  on  the  ground  of  collusion, 
wouldn't  it?  And  I'm  just  about  crazy  enough  to  hunt  up 
that  private  detective  and  put  him  in  my  private  graveyard. 
All  us  Texans  have  our  private  graveyards,  you  know.  You 
must  have  seen  it  in  the  books  how  quick  and  reckless  we 
are  with  our  shootin'  irons.  And  you  couldn't  blame  me  for 
being  a  hasty  shooter,  because  I'm  built  that  way." 

Coykendall  was  not  afraid  of  the  gun  talk,  but  he  saw  the 
hazard  of  a  mere  hint  to  the  courts.  He  made  a  show  of 
resistance : 

"Why  are  you  so  interested  in  my  wife?" 

"Oh,  I'm  not  in  love  with  her.  If  I  was  I  wouldn't  be 
turnin'  her  over  to  you.  Fact  is,  I  never  met  the  lady.  But 
I  heard  her  cryin'  once.  I  heard  her  say:  'He's  goin'  to 
divorce  me.  He  has  more  than  evidence  enough — but  I'm 


3S2  BEAUTY 

all  too  innocent.'  I'll  never  forget  what  her  voice  sounded 
like — like  stranglin'  a  little  girl.  I  saw  her  photograph, 
too,  and  I  saw  her  twice  with  her  face  all  veiled  up — and  all 
I  can  say  is,  she's  suffered  enough,  and  if  she  wants  you, 
I'm  goin'  to  get  you  for  her.  So  I  say,  if  you  don't  go  back 
to  her  I'll  get  you  myself,  and  I'll  see  you  don't  get  anybody 
else.  What  I'll  do  to  you  will  make  what  that  face  doctor 
did  to  your  wife  look  like  nothin'  at  tall." 

Coykendall  writhed,  but  he  knew  that  he  was  caught. 
His  knowledge  of  Texans  was  gained  from  fiction,  but  fiction 
reiterated  is  better  believed  than  history. 

Larrick  said:  "Norry,  you  know  the  poor  angel  that  this 
little  tin  devil  married.  Supposin'  you  telephone  her  or  go 
see  her  and  ask  her  to  take  him  home  and  forgive  him, 
because  God  built  him  out  of  some  skunk-material  He  had 
left  over  one  day." 

Coykendall  hastened  to  protest: 

"Oh,  I'll — go  back.  I'll  go  back,  damn  you!  You  don't 
need  to  see  her." 

Larrick  said:  "That's  right.  You  run  home  and  get  the 
credit  for  doing  the  right  thing  for  once.  You  love  to  brag 
about  your  own  weaknesses  and  get  women  to  mothering  you. 
But  just  ask  your  wife  to  telephone  Norry  that  the  prodigal 
has  come  home  and  the  veal  is  in  the  oven.  I  don't  expect 
you'll  be  a  very  good  husband  or  a  very  true  one,  but  you're 
the  kind  of  thing  she  likes,  and  as  Abe  Lincoln  said — " 

It  was  many  hours  later  when  Norry  was  called  to  the  tele- 
phone. Larrick,  standing  near,  could  hear  a  crackling  voice 
hysterical  with  laughter.  It  was  Mrs.  Coykendall  crying: 

"  Oh,  Norry,  Norry!  Roy  wants  me  to  tell  you  that  we've 
decided  to  forget  past  differences  and — and —  He  says  that 
you've  been  a  good  friend  of  his  and  you  would  be  glad  to 
hear  it.  Isn't  it  wonderful?  Poor  Roy,  he's  such  a  darling. 
He's  had  such  an  unhappy  time  of  it.  But  now  we're  to- 
gether again.  And  I'm  so  happy !  Oh,  so  blessedly  happy !" 

Norry  told  Larrick,  and  they  felt  that  they  had  managed 
to  interpolate  in  the  gloom  of  the  world  one  interlude  of 
joy;  they  had  torn  a  little  rift  in  the  clouds  for  the  sunlight. 
But  they  were  more  than  ever  lost  now  in  the  riddle  of  Clelia. 


Book  VI 
THE  AFTERGLOW 


CHAPTER  I 

NO  theory,  insane  soever,  was  left,  unspoken  or  untried, 
in  the  search  for  an  answer  to  the  puzzle  who  killed 
Clelia  and  why?  Other  girls  had  vanished  and  never  re- 
turned, except  in  the  recurrent  feature  stories  of  the  news- 
papers. Criminals  of  the  more  horrible  sort  were  arrested 
in  all  parts  of  the  country  and  released  only  after  they  had 
been  readvertised.  The  search  was  not  confined  even  to  this 
earth. 

Mrs.  Roantree,  who  was  fashionable  in  all  things,  was  of  a 
practical  mind  as  well.  When  she  accepted  spiritualism,  it 
had  already  been  lifted  beyond  a  dismal  solace  of  the  shabby 
poor  into  a  somber  recreation  for  the  rich.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge, 
Sir  William  Crookes,  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  and  other 
English  knights  aberrant  were  going  about  the  world  like 
gorgeous  crusaders  proclaiming  that  "a  hole"  had  been 
made  in  "the  wall,"  that  the  dead  were  indeed  at  last  talking 
to  the  living. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge  had  published  hundreds  of  pages  of  steno- 
graphic reports  of  conversations  with  a  boy  who  could  not 
be  other  than  his  son.  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  had  irref- 
ragable proof  (which  none  but  the  most  bigoted  could  deny) 
of  his  own  contact  with  his  own  son. 

With  the  usual  American  passion  for  reducing  everything  to 
machinery,  a  kind  of  typewriter  for  spiritese  had  been  devised, 
a  popular  revival  of  the  old  planchette  under  the  trade  name 
of  the  ouija  board.  Millions  had  been  sold  by  a  manu- 
facturer who  laughed  at  their  occult  significance. 

It  was  said  that  Edison  was  preparing  a  special  machine, 
a  labor-saving  device  for  ghosts,  or  a  new  arc  light  for  the 
dark  valley.  Automatic  writing  was  all  the  rage.  It  was  an 
unpopular  soul,  indeed,  who  could  not  find  a  dead  corre- 
spondent to  exchange  letters  with. 


356  BEAUTY 

Mrs.  Roantree,  like  many  another  aristocrat,  had  a  keen 
business  sense.  She  demanded  good  service  for  good  money. 
When  she  accepted  spiritualism  she  proposed  to  put  it  to 
work  at  once.  She  went  straight  to  a  medium  who  had 
brought  "back"  many  a  dead  soldier,  had  put  many  a 
lost  daughter  into  communion  with  mourning  parents. 

To  them  there  was  a  precious  reassurance  in  such  a  stingy 
message  as,  "Tell  mother  I  am  well  and  happy  and  not  to 
worry."  But  Mrs.  Roantree  would  not  be  put  off  with 
such  shoddy  merchandise.  "If  you  can  talk  to  the  dead, 
talk  to  the  murdered  dead,"  she  demanded.  "Bring  back 
Clelia.  Get  her  own  word  and  we'll  capture  the  fiend  and 
drag  him  into  court.  What  better  testimony  could  there  be 
than  the  victim  herself?  Nobody  questions  a  deathbed 
statement.  How  could  anybody  doubt  one  made  still 
later?" 

But,  strange  to  say,  the  facile  mediums  who  were  offered 
this  chance  to  convert  the  most  skeptic,  demurred,  refused 
even  to  put  in  a  call  for  Clelia.  The  mediums  never  ven- 
tured into  the  courts  with  Clelia's  or  any  other  person's 
postmortem  statements.  The  police  paid  no  calls  upon  the 
mediums  except  occasionally  to  arrest  them,  though  un- 
solved murder  mysteries  piled  up  until  they  became  a  news- 
paper scandal,  and  official  investigations  were  conducted  and 
many  an  officer  broken. 

The  murdered  dead  never  denounced  their  assassins,  and 
nobody  expected  them  to. 

But  Mrs.  Roantree  was  of  an  exacting  disposition.  When 
she  found  that  hours  spent  following  the  meandering  ouija 
and  hours  spent  in  listening  to  the  imitation  epilepsies  of  the 
mediums,  produced  not  even  a  hint  of  Clelia's  case,  Mrs. 
Roantree  forswore  the  cult. 

Clelia's  mother  and  father,  for  all  their  yearning,  could 
not  or  would  not  believe.  They  would  not  seek  the  medi- 
ums. They  kept  a  dreadful  sanity  that  kept  their  sorrow 
deeper,  more  poignant. 

Mr.  Blakeney  fought  the  gloom  with  paid  explorers.  He 
sent  a  school  of  detectives  here  and  there.  But  even  they 
wearied  of  the  vanity  and  resigned  the  task.  To  save  their 


THE   AFTERGLOW  357 

faces  they  agreed  upon  suicide  as  the  simple  and  normal 
explanation.  But  those  who  knew  Clelia  somehow  knew 
that  this  easy  answer  was  not  the  answer. 

One  day  the  baffled  Larrick  received  a  telephone  call 
from  the  sculptor,  Randel,  and  an  invitation  to  come 
to  his  studio.  It  was  the  first  of  the  sumptuous  studios 
that  Larrick  ever  saw.  The  palatial  room,  with  its  lofty 
ceiling,  its  arras-hung  balcony,  its  immense  draperies,  its 
tumbled  brasses  and  bronzes  and  marble  fragments,  its 
magnificent  disarray,  looked  like  a  storeroom  of  spoils  from 
conquered  cities. 

Burnley,  the  painter,  had  already  arrived.  He  greeted 
Larrick  with  a  fellowship  in  bereavement.  Randel  guided 
Larrick  round  a  colossal  horse  of  clay  and  iron  that  made  an 
alcove  of  the  north  side  of  the  room. 

And  there  Larrick  saw  four  Clelias.  All  four  held  the 
same  attitude.  Each  tiniest  wrinkle  in  the  silken  drapery 
was  exactly  repeated.  The  hands  prayed  the  same  prayer. 

Larrick  felt  bewitched,  bemocked.  Tragedy  had  again 
been  turned  to  burlesque  by  multiplication.  Four  times  one 
did  not  make  four,  but  nothing  at  all. 

The  unique  disaster  and  pathos  of  Clelia's  beauty  were 
rendered  cheap,  almost  commercial  by  their  reduplication. 
There  was  no  comfort  in  being  jostled  away  from  a  grief  so 
deep  that  it  seemed  a  final  beauty,  a  precious  sorrow  to  hug 
tight  and  never  let  go. 

Randal  saw  what  Larrick  suffered  and  explained: 

"I  made  one  for  her  father  and  mother  and  one  for  the 
law;  one  for  you  and  one  for  me." 

Larrick's  heart  quickened  at  the  thought  of  possessing  a 
replica  of  Clelia,  but  he  could  not  bear  the  sight  of  that 
white  and  rigid  quartet  of  her.  Randel  threw  cloths  over 
three  of  the  casts.  Instantly  the  one  that  remained  took 
on  reality  and  an  incomprehensible  charm. 

With  her  three  sisters  gone  from  view,  this  Clelia  was  all 
Clelia,  so  snowy,  lithe,  and  intent  that  she  seemed  almost  to 
surge  forward  with  the  vigor  of  the  Winged  Victory. 

Larrick  could  not  but  draw  near  her  and  appeal  for  a 
word  or  any  sign  from  her.  She  seemed  just  about  to  raise 


3S8  BEAUTY 

her  eyelids  and  pour  language  from  her  irises  as  in  a  happier 
day. 

Yet  she  did  not  move  or  breathe  or  lift  her  lashes.  And 
she  seemed  hardly  to  be  Clelia  at  all  in  the  aloofness,  in  this 
first  refusal  of  an  opportunity  to  dart  a  mischievous  glance, 
draw  a  taunting  smile,  and  laugh  some  light  mockery. 

Larrick  turned  to  Randel,  eager  for  a  word  of  praise,  and 
shook  his  head: 

"It's  not  Clelia,  after  all.  You've  got  her  form,  but  you 
haven't  got  her  color.  It's  bad  enough  to  think  of  her 
standing  there  through  all  eternity  without  once  budging, 
but  she  wasn't  a  pale,  whitewashed  thing  like  this.  She 
ought  to  have  her  own  color  of  hair  and  skin  and  mouth. 
The  statue  ought  to  be  painted." 

"Oh,  my  God!"  Burnley  groaned,  with  all  the  reproach  of 
a  trained  artist  for  a  hopeless  Philistine.  "Surely  you've 
been  off  the  range  long  enough  to  get  over  wanting  tinted 
statuary,  the  cheapest  trash  in  the  world." 

The  humble  Larrick  felt  himself  snubbed  indeed  now,  but 
Randel  came  to  his  rescue: 

"The  Greeks  tinted  their  statues,  used  golden  draperies 
and  jeweled  eyes.  I  read  once  how  Praxiteles  engaged  a 
famous  painter  to  color  his  Marble  Faun  for  him  so  that  it 
would  look  like  nature  in  every  detail." 

Anything  the  Greeks  did  is  good  enough  for  any  artist.  So 
Burnley,  after  some  throat-clearing,  was  suddenly  converted 
to  Larrick's  fantastic  thought. 

"Let  me  tint  one  of  those,"  he  said.  "I  made  a  sketch 
of  Clelia  when  the  child  was  in  the  ice.  Her  color  was  half 
her  beauty.  I'll  have  a  try  at  it." 

And  so  on  another  day  Larrick  was  summoned  to  see 
Clelia  redeemed  from  pallor.  Her  hair,  her  flesh,  her  lips, 
her  creamy  gown  were  all  delicately  hued.  Though  he  had 
attempted  fidelity,  the  indomitable  artistry  of  Burnley  had 
somehow  given  a  little  more  than  realism  to  the  work. 

Larrick  was  profoundly  thrilled. 

That  envelope  of  contours  and  planes  which  had  inclosed 
all  that  Clelia  was  was  no  longer  a  cold  and  fatal  white. 
It  was  warm  and  various,  no  longer  naked  and  forlorn  t  but 


THE    AFTERGLOW  359 

clothed  with  a  tinted  sheen  as  if  scarfs  of  ineffable  delicacy 
had  been  wreathed  about  her.  The  profiles  that  had  shifted 
from  melody  to  melody  as  he  moved  before  her  were  now 
like  tunes  enriched  with  harmony,  voices  singing  above 
instruments  played  tenderly. 

The  formality  and  vigor  of  white  sculpture  had  been  un- 
congenial to  Clelia,  but  now,  flushed  and  imbued  with  that 
miracle  of  broken  light  we  adore  as  color,  her  image  was  more 
like  herself. 

And  yet,  after  the  first  rejoicing  that  this  beauty  had  been 
restored  to  her,  the  deep  damnation  of  her  taking-off  seemed 
even  more  inhuman,  ungodly,  even  undevilish.  The  weight 
of  grief  was  doubled. 

For  as  the  increase  of  knowledge  only  multiplies  the  scope 
of  ignorance,  so  the  increase  of  beauty  is  but  the  aggrandize- 
ment of  the  cruelty  of  death.  So  grief  grows  defiant  of 
torture,  and  torments  itself,  whips  itself  and  salts  the 
wounds,  makes  scars  for  memory's  sake. 

And  now  Larrick,  wrung  with  new  anguish  for  Clelia,  so 
loved  his  very  regret  that  he  wanted  to  make  sure  of  its  con- 
stancy. He  demanded  a  monument  to  his  agony. 

"There's  only  one  thing  more  we  need.  We  ought  to  have 
her  now  as  we  found  her  in  the  lake  there.  If  we  could 
only  put  her  back  in  that  block  of  ice — in  ice  that  would 
never  melt  any  more  than  marble  would!  I  wonder  if  we 
couldn't  build  a  shaft  of  glass  around  her." 

Both  Randel  and  Burnley  shuddered  at  this.  There  was 
no  precedent  for  such  a  deed  in  Greek  or  any  other  art  so 
far  as  Randel  knew.  He  joined  Burnley  in  a  gesture  of 
abhorrence. 

But  Larrick  persisted: 

"Don't  you  remember  the  way  her  light  played  over  the — 
the  sunset  and  the  moonlight  and  the  daybreak  and  all? 
It  was  like  holding  her  in  the  heart  of  a  diamond.  That's 
where  that  statue  ought  to  be.  I'd  pay  anything.  I'd 
pay  all  I  got  in  the  world  to  have  that.  Couldn't  it  be  done? 
Couldn't  we  try  it,  anyways?" 

Larrick  was  so  passionate,  his  instincts  so  sincere,  his 
primitive  simplicity  so  unspoiled  by  schools  of  art  and  the 


360  BEAUTY 

despotries  of  criticism,  that  Randel  was  beginning  to  respect 
him. 

He  hesitated  now  to  ridicule  or  deny  a  whim  that  might  be 
an  inspiration  from  that  source  of  inspiration,  the  deep 
inner  sea  of  universal  longings.  Randel  knew  that  one  of 
the  secrets  of  genius  is  the  retention  of  the  power  to  wonder 
and  to  thrill  at  simple,  familiar  things  and  moods  and  to 
combine  them  into  new  forms.  When  a  man  has  lost  his 
gift  to  be  as  a  child  he  will  do  well  to  listen  to  children. 

So  Randel,  dreading  to  disobey  the  fantastic  demand  of  this 
unlettered  and  unspoiled  native  of  the  wilderness,  went 
away  meekly  and  took  up  the  telephone. 

Burnley  and  Larrick  waited  in  mute  contemplation  of  the 
statue — how  firm  and  precise  and  lifelike  it  was,  and  yet  how 
lifeless,  how  deathful;  how  beautiful  and  serene  and  content 
and  thinking  it  was,  and  yet  how  hideous  it  was  for  the  soul 
to  vanish  that  shaped  and  was  shaped  by  the  body  that 
shaped  the  mold  that  shaped  this  statue.  Everything  was 
shapes  and  reflections,  and  all  we  knew  of  people  was  the 
beating  upon  our  eyes  of  the  light  that  had  beaten  upon 
them;  the  quiver  against  our  ears  of  the  air  that  they  had 
shaken,  the  echo  upon  our  senses  of  the  forces  that  had 
shaken  their  senses. 

It  was  inconceivable  that  the  soul  of  Clelia  was  not  some- 
thing that  preceded  her  birth  and  persisted  after  her  death. 
And  yet  two  souls  had  never  been  known  to  hold  communion 
except  through  the  flesh  and  its  dealings  with  matter.  A 
countless  many  had  believed  and  declared  that  such  mes- 
sages were  constantly  sent  about  the  earth  and  to  and  from 
infinity,  into  and  out  of  the  grave.  But  their  testimonies 
were  suspect  and  denied  and  in  any  case  of  no  intrinsic 
importance  and  of  no  agreement. 

The  two  men  fell  into  that  kind  of  stupor  which  some  call 
meditation,  that  wide-eyed  sleep  of  the  mind.  They  were  so 
dream  deep  that  Rondel's  voice  startled  them  when  he  came 
back. 

"I  got  Louis  Tiffany  on  the  wire  and  he  said  that  it  would 
be  quite  possible  to  build  a  mold  and  pour  into  it  molten 
glass  that  would  surround  the  figure.  It  would  have  to  be 


THE   AFTERGLOW  361 

annealed  and  that  would  be  a  long  process,  but  he  says  that 
the  result  would  be  very  beautiful,  because  the  slight  frac- 
tures and  irregularity  of  the  glass  would  probably  give  the 
shaft  an  iridescent  glow." 

Under  the  auspices  of  one  who  had  given  to  glass  so  many 
new  beauties  and  given  to  beauty  new  glasses  and  to  his 
country's  art  such  luster  the  caprice  of  the  cowboy's  grief 
became  a  revelation  of  genius.  The  painter  and  the  sculptor 
were  eager  to  share  his  glory. 

The  history  of  every  art  is  full  of  such  critical  somersaults, 
bouleversements,  about-faces.  The  tides  of  opinion  can  be 
made  to  flow  or  stand  or  ebb  at  times  by  some  loud-voiced 
Canute,  and  what  it  is  scholarly  to  ridicule  becomes  over- 
night scholarly  to  revere. 

In  the  chronicles  of  the  immense  additions  America  has 
made  to  the  world's  arts  this  is  forever  happening.  The  very 
impatiences  and  uncouthnesses  and  racial  mysticisms, 
humors,  skepticisms,  and  arrogances  that  disgust  the  Europe- 
looking  scholar  abruptly  become  the  sacred  outbursts  of 
volcanic  fire,  hot  lavas  from  new  craters  in  the  plains. 

And  so  we  find  the  Indian  savage  and  his  celebrants;  the 
cowboy  and  his  retainers;  the  little  lazy  Poe;  the  professorial 
Emerson  who  ate  pie  for  breakfast ;  the  shy,  little  old  maid, 
Emily  Dickinson,  who  scribbled  in  secret  better  poetry  than 
Sappho;  the  parson's  timid  wife  who  wrote  a  novel  about 
slaves  and  brought  on  an  enormous  war,  and  gave  the  rail- 
splitting  Lincoln  his  chance  to  be  mankind's  sublimest  fig- 
ure; the  world's  joke,  Susan  B.  Anthony,  who  said  that  the 
wives  and  mothers  of  men  deserved  the  suffrage  as  well  as  the 
suffering;  the  wallowing  Walt  Whitman;  the  derided  build- 
ers of  the  skyscraping  office  steeples;  the  diabolic  Edison, 
who  dared  to  attempt  to  fasten  sound  and  motion  to  perma- 
nent records;  a  Whistler  dawdling  from  West  Point  to  the 
conquest  of  salons;  an  uncouth  Inness  dipping  his  brush  in 
Yankee  fire  and  light;  the  sculptor,  Borglum,  from  Idaho, 
who,  like  his  ancestral  Thor,  must  hammer  a  mountain  into 
a  monument — these  and  many  another  have  turned  the 
laughter  of  the  critic  suddenly  back  into  his  throat.  They 
have  accepted  and  defied  the  mockery  of  their  own  neighbors 


362  BEAUTY 

and  have  won  through  to  immortal  glory.  If  ever  they  stum- 
bled and  were  awkward  and  undignified  it  was  because  they 
carried  a  great  burden  of  beauty  and  were  more  anxious 
for  its  safety  than  for  their  own  dignity. 

One  might  think  that  the  time  had  come  when  no  Amer- 
ican critic  would  be  fool  enough  to  deny  his  country's 
majesty  in  every  art.  One  might  well  believe  that  the 
American  critic  would  be  chiefly  afraid  lest  at  the  end  of  his 
life  it  be  found  that  many  a  genius  had  passed  him  by  un- 
recognized and  uncrowned.  But  the  rarest  thing  of  all  is  to 
find  a  critic  in  any  art  who  does  not  chiefly  announce  himself 
by  standing  on  the  dungheap  of  his  own  bad  guesses  and 
proclaiming  that  his  country  is  now  and  ever  was  and  ever 
shall  be  but  a  barren  barnyard  over  which  he  rules  with  spur 
and  beak  and  cock-a-doodle-doo. 

Meanwhile  on  the  roads  the  great  artists  go  by,  in  the 
fields  the  delvers  are  busy,  beneath  them  the  miners  drag  up 
gold  and  silver,  and  the  sky  is  full  of  song. 


CHAPTER  H 

TO  build  a  huge  lens  about  Clelia's  statue  was  an  instant 
thing  to  think  of  and  to  approve  or  disapprove,  but  to 
achieve  it  was  a  process  of  long  and  scientific  toil. 

Randel  brought  from  his  telephone  conference  information 
that  made  necessary  the  preparation  of  a  new  cast,  not  of 
plaster,  but  a  fire-resisting  clay  that  would  keep  its  shape 
in  a  furnace  of  two  thousand  degrees  and  more. 

The  colors  must  be  applied  in  a  permanent  enamel  of 
metallic  oxides,  which  the  clay  would  partly  absorb  and 
which  the  heat  would  not  destroy.  And  these  colors,  like  the 
palette  of  the  ceramic  artist,  must  be  chosen  not  for  their 
appearance  before  their  incineration,  but  for  their  afterglow. 

He  set  Burnley  upon  the  track  of  the  necessary  lore,  and 
he  went  in  quest  of  the  proper  clay  for  his  molds,  and  of  a 
glass  factory  where  the  experiment  could  be  made. 

In  the  meanwhile  Larrick,  the  Texas  Maecenas,  who  could 
furnish  artists  with  fire  and  fuel  which  he  could  not  kindle 
in  himself,  went  about  his  other  businesses.  They  seemed 
entirely  unimportant  now,  and  unsatisfactory  beyond  endur- 
ance. He  had  had  no  business,  indeed,  but  pleasure.  And 
the  very  thought  of  happiness  was  abhorrent. 

He  had  never  won  a  promise  of  love  from  Clelia,  or  any- 
thing better  than  comradeship  in  play,  except  for  one  little 
while  when  in  the  moonlit  canoe  she  grew  dizzy  with  the 
fumes  of  new  emotions  and  kissed  him  with  a  passion  that 
was  less  a  tribute  to  him  than  a  brief  surrender  to  a  sudden 
fever. 

Yet  Larrick  felt  himself  her  widower,  at  times;  at  other 
times,  the  priest  of  her  beauty  and  the  pitiful  brevity  of  it. 

To  dance  or  laugh  or  love  or  seek  diversion  anywhere  with 
anyone  seemed  an  insult  to  her  memory  and  his  loyalty. 

He  wore  crape  upon  his  heart  and  he  brooded  bitterly. 

24 


364  BEAUTY 

New  York  was  the  desert  again;  and  all  its  throngs,  and  the 
storms  of  its  prosperity,  its  industry,  and  its  frivolity  were 
only  such  far-off  tumult  as  had  filled  the  desert  sky  when 
the  clouds  were  in  travail  and  could  not  rain. 

Norry  Frewin  had  been  imbued  with  some  of  Larrick's 
own  solemnity.  His  consecration  to  Clelia's  memory  some- 
how took  the  shape  of  a  desire  to  sacrifice  himself  to  some 
honorable  cause.  He  could  think  of  nothing  more  honorable 
or  more  self-sacrificial  than  to  offer  his  hand  and  his  name 
to  Francine  Haslett,  the  girl  who  had  been  the  victim  of  the 
desires  that  Clelia  had  unwittingly  inspired  and  would  not 
respect. 

Norry  discussed  with  Larrick  the  whole  duty  of  a  man  in 
such  a  case,  and  both  were  so  insatiable  for  sorrow  that  they 
agreed  upon  the  matter.  It  was  plainly  Norry's  obligation 
to  redeem  the  poor  girl  from  the  shame  of  her  vicarious  trans- 
gression. And  so  Norry  set  forth  to  humble  himself  as  a 
suitor  before  her,  to  offer  her  an  ex  post  facto  betrothal,  to 
present  the  newspapers  with  a  sensation  and  his  father  and 
mother  with  another  heartbreak. 

Larrick  wrung  Norry's  hand  and  bade  him  Godspeed  to 
the  stake  as  earnestly  as  any  young  martyr  ever  was  sped. 
Norry  came  back  unexpectedly  betimes  and  his  humor  was 
anything  but  martyresque.  He  was  whooping  with  laugh- 
ter, choked  with  the  burlesque  that  life  is  always  making  of 
the  loftiest  motives.  He  was  so  incoherent  both  in  his 
thoughts  and  his  language  that  Larrick  could  hardly  find 
out  what  had  happened. 

"The  Lord  never  meant  me  for  a  hero!"  he  howled. 
"Every  time  I  try  to  do  the  noble  I  step  on  a  banana  peel. 
That  poor  girl  that  I- led  astray — well,  I  didn't  lead  her 
astray.  Old  Dame  Nature  beat  me  to  her  by  years  and 
years — and  is  still  at  it. 

"I  went  to  her  humble  apartment  house  and  was  about 
to  ring  like  a  combination  of  bridegroom  and  undertaker, 
when  I  heard  voices  rolling  through  the  thin  door.  Her 
mother  was  doing  most  of  the  talking  and  I  felt  that  I  had  a 
right  to  the  information  that  all  the  other  neighbors  were 
listening  to  from  their  open  doors. 


THE   AFTERGLOW  365 

"  I  found  out  that  my  victim  had  not  only  been  very  busy 
before  I  met  her,  but  has  not  been  idle  during  my  absence 
in  the  mountains.  Her  sainted  mother  was  denouncing  her, 
not  because  she  was  wicked,  but  because  she  was  so  careless 
of  appearances  that  my  lawyer  had  collected  no  end  of  docu- 
ments and  had  told  her  lawyer  that  he  had  better  call  off 
the  case.  Her  lawyer  was  in  the  room  then,  to  see  if  he  could 
collect  his  expenses  for  the  blackmail  that  didn't  work. 
Francine's  mother  had  expected  a  fortune,  and  she  got  a 
bill,  and  she  was  uproarious. 

"I  tiptoed  away  and  telephoned  my  lawyer.  He  said  he 
had  been  trying  to  get  me  all  day  and  that  I  needn't 
worry. 

"Good  Lord!  what  an  escape!  If  I  had  telephoned  poor 
Francine,  she  would  have  met  me  at  the  License  Bureau, 
and  we'd  have  been  man  and  wife  by  now.  Oooh!  what  a 
solemn  ass  I  was !  Well,  I  got  by  once  more,  and  I  hope  it 
will  be  a  lesson  to  me.  I'll  never  try  to  do  a  decent  thing 
again,  for  I  never  felt  such  a  fool  in  my  life." 

Larrick  had  shared  the  tragic  note  of  Norry's  beautiful 
plan  of  immolation.  He  had  to  share  the  ridicule. 

He  was  at  the  breaking  point  of  grief,  so  poisoned  with  the 
very  fatigue  of  sorrow  that  he  must  either  snap  or  rebound. 
Being  young  and  hale,  he  had  not  lost  elasticity.  As  the 
Greek  tragedies  were  followed  by  the  antics  of  satyrs  who 
swatted  one  another  with  bladders  and  worse,  so  Larrick 
reverted  to  a  gayety  almost  more  cynical  than  his  despair 
had  been. 

He  felt  a  drunkard's  thirst  for  revelry.  But  an  instinct  of 
decent  hypocrisy  ruled  him.  As  a  widower  might,  from  pure 
respect  for  the  departed,  slink  away  out  of  sight  of  his 
familiars,  for  a  carousal  that  he  could  no  longer  defer,  so 
Larrick  felt  an  impulse  to  get  abroad,  to  put  an  ocean  be- 
tween his  mourning  and  his  frolic. 

His  fortune  that  had  come  so  easily  rebuked  him  by  its 
almost  undiminished  grandeur.  The  hospitality  of  the 
Frewins  and  others  had  checked  his  inroads  on  it. 

He  wanted  to  gamble  and  to  be  drunk,  to  be  very  drunk 
for  a  long  while.  Getting  drunk  in  prohibited  America  was 


366  BEAUTY 

not  difficult,  but  it  was  of  necessity  surreptitious  and  it  was 
also  dangerous,  since  the  law  had  put  an  end  to  the  pride  of 
the  distiller  in  the  purity  of  his  wares.  Only  a  chemist  could 
tell  wood  alcohol  from  grain  in  advance,  though  the  coroner 
could  easily  tell  afterward. 

To  Larrick  Paris,  Monte  Carlo,  Ostend,  Venice,  Madrid, 
the  Riviera  were  little  infernal  heavens  for  relaxation.  He 
resolved  to  escape  from  this  America  which  he  had  never 
left  before.  There  were  too  many  reminders  of  gloom 
wherever  he  moved  here. 

He  saw  Nancy  Fleet  now  and  then,  but  always  by  acci- 
dent. He  felt  an  increasing  longing  to  go  to  her  and  to  take 
electricity  from  the  storage  batteries  of  her  galvanic  pres- 
ence. But  he  was  ashamed  of  the  perfidy  he  had  shown  to  her 
in  his  infatuation  for  Clelia,  and  he  blenched  at  the  faith- 
lessness to  Clelia  implied  in  his  inclination  toward  Nancy, 
In  Europe  he  would  be  free  of  both  fetters,  and  his  impa- 
tience grew  to  the  frenzy  of  a  cowboy  in  an  attack  of  "prairie 
fever  " ;  he  had  a  mania  for  galloping  madly  through  crowded 
settlements. 

He  spent  much  time  in  planning  his  foray.  He  consulted 
Cook,  Raymond  and  Whitcomb,  and  other  dealers  in  voy- 
ages. He  was  reminded  of  Mr.  Frewin's  warning  that  he 
would  have  to  pay  his  income  tax  before  he  could  get  a  pass- 
port. He  spent  an  anxious  time  with  an  expert,  who  drew 
up  his  return  for  him  and  tried  in  vain  to  find  some  excuse 
for  diminishing  his  payments. 

Larrick  had  no  dependents  to  claim  exemption  for;  he 
had  no  expenses  except  living  expenses,  and  those  were  not 
deductible;  he  had  no  factory,  no  office,  no  pay  roll,  no  raw 
material;  he  could  not  .claim  depreciation  or  bad  debts  or 
business  losses. 

And  so  he  found  that  he  must  indeed  suffer  for  his  unham- 
pered prosperity.  The  government  that  he  had  never  seen, 
the  government  that  had  never  done  anything  specifically  for 
him,  reached  out  like  an  old  monarch  and  took  40  per  cent 
of  his  wealth. 

The  seizure  of  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  in 
taxes  was  like  a  compulsory  amputation  of  all  his  limbs.  His 


THE   AFTERGLOW  367 

remarks  on  Uncle  Sam  would  have  been  treasonable  and 
would  have  got  him  a  life  sentence  in  prison  if  they  had  been 
uttered  during  the  war. 

The  pride  of  being  able  to  pay  such  a  tax  was  no  consola- 
tion to  him,  though  he  had  never  expected  before  to  rise 
above  the  groundling  incomes  that  pay  no  tax  at  all.  The 
fortune  that  was  left  after  the  tax  was  deducted  would  once 
have  seemed  to  him  a  fairy's  inexhaustible  purse.  But  now 
he  could  think  only  of  the  magnitude  of  his  loss.  What  re- 
mained seemed  almost  pauperdom. 

The  tax  expert  had  pointed  out  that  Larrick  could  make 
a  handsome  deduction  for  gifts  to  charity,  if  he  had  made 
them.  But  to  his  shame,  when  he  was  asked  to  list  the 
recognized  philanthropies  he  had  contributed  to,  he  found 
them  few  and  small. 

He  was  generous  by  disposition  and  could  never  resist  an 
appeal  outspoken  or  withheld.  Had  he  not  risked  his  life  to 
save  Norry  Frewin  in  that  far-off  epoch  when  they  met  in 
Texas?  Had  he  not  borrowed  money  to  lend  to  the  penni- 
less prodigal?  Yet  the  catalogue  of  his  other  benefactions 
would  not  have  done  credit  to  a  shoe  clerk. 

It  was  not  that  he  had  shut  his  eyes  and  ears  and  heart  to 
misery.  He  had  simply  been  traveling  in  regions  where  the 
wants  of  the  poor  were  not  audible  or  visible. 

He  determined  to  remedy  this  disgrace,  and  he  began  to 
send  checks  of  liberal  size  to  such  charities  as  he  encoun- 
tered— to  the  kindergartens,  to  the  Seaman's  Church  Insti- 
tute, to  the  Salvation  Army,  to  various  hospitals,  to  the 
Armenians,  the  Near  East  Fund,  to  the  French  War  Orphans' 
Fund,  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children  and  to  Animals, 
to  the  Actors'  Fund,  to  the  Chinese  Famine  Fund,  to  the 
funds  for  the  help  of  the  disabled  war  veterans  whom  America 
neglected. 

When  it  became  known  that  he  was  of  a  giving  disposi- 
tion, his  name  reverberated  along  the  corridors  of  organized 
mercy.  He  began  to  feel  a  trifle  overworked.  His  mail  grew 
heavy  with  circulars  and  personal  letters  soliciting  doles. 
He  easily  acquired  an  appalling  ability  to  drop  into  his  waste 
basket  circulars,  letters,  and  pictures  calling  his  attention  to 


368  BEAUTY 

the  fact  that  unless  he  acted  at  once  a  child  would  die  some- 
where that  a  dollar  would  have  saved. 

Among  his  mail  one  morning  came  a  letter  from  Randel 
telling  him  of  the  difficulties  he  had  met  in  finding  a  man  to 
incase  Clelia's  statue  in  glass.  Most  of  the  big  manufactur- 
ers were  specialists  who  would  not  venture  out  of  their  own 
fields;  one  made  bottles  for  medicines,  one  made  them  for 
milk,  another  made  flasks  of  various  sizes  and  was  proud  of 
blowing  demijohns  that  held  many  gallons  and  achieved  a 
thickness  of  half  an  inch.  Some  made  window  panes,  and 
others  mirrors.  Plate  glass  for  shops  took  all  the  output  of 
many;  motor  windshields  that  would  not  splinter  occupied 
others,  and  dishes  and  bowls  and  blanks  for  cut-glass  wares 
still  others. 

One  firm  was  making  glass  caskets  for  infants,  and  occa- 
sionally for  men  of  moderate  bulk,  and  was  proud  of  con- 
quering difficulties  that  had  balked  inventors  for  a  century. 

But  nobody  had  made  anything  resembling  the  solid  shaft 
that  Larrick  required,  and  nobody  would  even  undertake  it, 
especially  as  most  of  the  factories  were  shut  down. 

An  all-engulfing  tide  of  hard  times  had  by  now  thrown 
every  third  man  in  the  country  out  of  employment.  The 
rhythm  of  prosperity  was  on  the  down  swing  now.  Only  a 
few  months  before  and  it  had  been  almost  impossible  to  find 
a  workman  for  any  job  at  any  price.  Suddenly  it  was  almost 
impossible  for  a  workman  to  find  any  job  at  any  price.  The 
balloonish  power  of  capital  to  be  inflated  and  deflated  was 
making  fools  and  knaves  of  those  who  declared  every  panic 
to  be  the  foul  conspiracy  of  a  mysterious  god  called  Wall 
Street. 

But  that  inflated  wealth  which  had  filled  the  sky  like 
a  vast,  anchored  dirigible  was  now  a  flabby,  floppy  bag 
banging  the  ground.  One  day  everybody  had  money  and 
laborers  paid  thirty  dollars  for  a  silk  shirt.  Next  month  the 
laborer  wondered  about  bread,  and  the  cruel  employer  begged 
in  vain  for  pay-roll  loans  at  banks  whose  cupboards  were  all 
but  bare. 

Larrick  felt  a  sense  of  guilt  in  having  so  much  money 
as  the  fruit  of  so  little  toil,  when  everywhere  about  him 


THE   AFTERGLOW  369 

willing  labor  loafed  in  bitter  fear  and  looked  upon  large 
families  whose  very  bread  was  precarious  or  the  gift  of 
charity. 

He  had  an  impulse  now  and  then  to  devote  his  riches  to 
the  comfort  of  the  idle  multitudes,  but  when  he  measured 
his  resources  against  the  appalling  needs  he  felt  poorer  than 
the  poorest.  If  he  flung  it  broadcast  it  would  be  like  empty- 
ing a  canteen  upon  the  Mojave  Desert.  The  desert  would 
not  know  the  difference,  and  Larrick  would  have  nothing  to 
show  for  his  extravagance  but  an  empty  canteen. 

The  tenderest  heart,  when  frightened,  turns  to  a  fretful 
porcupine  and  closes  itself,  presenting  only  spines  to  all 
comers. 


CHAPTER  III 

O INCE  he  could  not  hope  to  attain  an  important  work  of 
O  charity  Larrick  resolved  to  achieve  at  least  one  work  of 
beauty. 

He  made  a  search  among  the  survivors  of  the  ancient 
guilds  of  glassmen  and  finally  discovered  one  whom  he  could 
excite  to  activity.  Walter  Sirch  gave  him  little  courtesy  or 
hope,  and  growled  that  he  was  only  moved  by  the  extrava- 
gant money  Larrick  offered  him,  a  guaranty  of  all  expenses, 
and  a  noble  reward  for  success. 

Sirch  was  a  petulant  genius,  and,  gruffly  as  he  talked,  his 
heart  began  to  bubble  and  seethe  like  a  pot  of  melting 
glass  as  Larrick  made  clear  his  desire.  He  put  his  wits  to 
work  and  got  rid  of  Larrick  rapidly,  that  he  might  incandesce 
alone.  The  very  difficulties  in  the  way  gave  him  courage. 

It  was  many  days  before  Larrick  heard  from  him,  and 
then  he  was  told  that  if  he  wanted  to  be  present  he  could 
come  over  and  see  how  foolish  his  hopes  had  been. 

On  the  next  morning  Larrick  went  with  Randel  and 
Burnley  to  Sirch 's  kilns. 

In  a  cluster  of  old  sheds  they  found  him  among  a  few  of 
his  trained  workmen,  glad  to  be  saved  for  a  while  from 
hunger. 

The  long,  low  furnace  had  been  charged  and  a  quantity 
of  glass  was  already  cooking.  Compressed  air  from  buried 
tanks  roared  in  upon  the  converging  flames  of  two  oil  burners, 
fed  by  oil  from  other  tanks.  Together  they  created  a  blazing 
torrent  of  fire  that  streamed  the  whole  length  of  the  furnace 
and  swept  round  a  curve  into  the  alternate  chamber,  com- 
pleting a  circlet  of  flame  hot  enough  to  melt  into  snowy 
syrup  what  had  been  sand  upon  a  Belgian  beach. 

In  that  fiery  nebula  of  atomized  oil  with  its  heat  of  twenty- 
five  hundred  Fahrenheit  degrees  and  more,  even  the  gritty 


THE    AFTERGLOW  371 

particles  the  sea  had  brayed  to  powder  must  deliquesce 
and  simmer. 

Larrick  had  no  love  of  sand.  There  had  been  too  much 
of  it  spread  about  his  feet  and  blown  into  his  eyes.  He  had 
never  realized  that  it  is  only  the  dust  of  a  wasted  metal 
which,  under  the  coercion  of  heat  enough,  becomes  a  creamy 
paste,  infinitely  ductile  and  versatile,  until  it  cools.  And 
then  does  not  disintegrate  and  return  to  sand,  but  remains 
translucent,  cohesive,  sharp  as  daggers,  yet  a  shield  against 
rain  and  air,  against  moth  and  worm  and  rust,  letting  nothing 
pass  but  light. 

As  Sirch  explained  the  metamorphosis,  Randel  mused 
aloud : 

"Human  beings  are  that  way,  too.  They  lie  about  in 
heaps  like  sand,  and  then  some  passion  fires  them,  white-hot, 
and  melts  the  flinty  souls,  and  afterward  they  are  never 
the  same  again.  They  come  out  of  the  furnace  brittle,  easy 
to  break,  and  mighty  dangerous  when  broken — but  they 
are  no  longer  dust.  The  light  shines  through  them  and  they 
are  beautiful.  Sin  has  its  virtues,  eh?" 

Sirch  liked  the  analogy,  but  preferred  to  do  the  talking 
himself.  He  led  his  guests  to  the  shed  where  the  Belgian 
sand  lay  heaped.  It  was  very  silken  to  the  clutch  and  ran 
between  the  fingers  dulcetly. 

An  old  man  was  shoveling  it  into  a  wheelbarrow  and  carry- 
ing it  to  the  mixer,  where  soda  ash,  lime,  arsenic,  borax,  and 
other  chemicals  were  added  in  proportions  carefully  chosen 
to  melt  the  sand  more  speedily  or  clarify  or  tint  the  glass. 

Into  this  raw  "batch"  were  thrown  fragments  of  unsuc- 
cessful glass,  granted  a  second  trial,  and  then  the  unpromis- 
ing-looking mess  was  dumped  into  the  maw  of  the  furnace, 
added  to  a  seething  lava  cooking  over  a  network  of  white- 
hot  checker-brick.  As  Larrick  and  the  others  saw  this 
stirred  with  a  long  bar,  the  heat  leaped  at  them  as  with 
claws  and  teeth,  and  they  fell  back. 

Sirch  explained  that  gravity  would  carry  the  batch  for- 
ward along  the  melting  space  to  the  working  end,  where  it 
would  reach  a  temperature  of  fifteen  hundred  degrees. 

He  had  taken  advantage  of  Larrick's  endowment  and  the 


372  BEAUTY 

necessity  for  making  glass  to  rescue  from  idleness  a  few  of  his 
most  needy  veterans  and  set  them  to  making  milk  bottles. 

At  one  end  of  the  furnace  stood  a  man  who  dipped  into  the 
caldron  a  long  rod  with  a  ball  of  fire  clay  on  the  end.  He 
twisted  this  "punty  "  and  dipped  up  as  much  of  the  glowing 
mucilage  as  would  drip  off  and  fill  a  bottle  mold.  Another 
man  passed  this  mold  beneath  a  jet  of  compressed  air  that 
drove  the  glass  home  and  filled  the  spaces. 

When  this  mold  was  cool  enough  it  was  opened  and  a  hot 
little  bottle  stood  revealed  with  a  lingering  flare  of  red  in  it. 

One  or  two  of  these  bottles  cooled  too  soon  and  flew  in  a 
thousand  pieces  with  a  little  popping  sound.  Sirch  explained 
that  a  reheating  and  a  slow  cooling  were  necessary  to  give  the 
glass  firmness. 

"Showing  the  value  of  a  second  marriage,"  said  Randel, 
"or  the  importance  of  sinning  at  least  twice." 

Sirch  conducted  them  then  to  the  annealing  furnace. 
The  bottles  were  fetched  hither  for  retempering  by  youths 
who  lifted  them  from  the  mold  shelf  with  long-handled 
scoops  and  transferred  them  to  an  oven,  or  lehr.  Gas  flames 
raised  the  cooled  bottles  to  a  high  heat  again.  Thence 
they  were  drawn  slowly  back  behind  a  curtain,  and  there 
cooled  for  several  hours,  and  came  forth  honest,  experienced 
bottles,  ready  for  the  rough  knocks  of  everyday  usage. 

The  rest  of  the  factory  was  idle  and  silent,  and  all  the 
furnaces  were  cold  where  formerly  men  had  stood  like  the 
trumpeters  of  Judgment  Day,  dipping  long  rods  into  the 
glassy  sea  and  setting  them  to  their  lips  and  blowing  upon 
them  till  visible  melodies  came  forth  and  froze,  as  they  flung 
them  in  flaming  arcs. 

Others  had  continued  the  catalogue  of  miracles  that  heat 
wreaks  upon  the  idle  sands,  teaching  them  to  foam  and  yield 
to  a  gentle  breath,  to  bloom  like  soap  bubbles,  soap  bubbles 
that  can  be  shaped  and  scissored,  rolled  and-  twisted,  spun 
out  into  invisible  hairs,  formed  into  beads  for  rosaries  to 
catch  Heaven's  ear,  beads  to  win  savages  and  new  worlds 
with,  jewels  to  mimic  precious  stones,  lenses  to  bring  the  far- 
off  planets  under  our  eyes  and  to  make  visible  the  fauna  and 
flora  in  the  jungle  of  a  drop  of  water,  to  give  us  new  weapons 


THE   AFTERGLOW  373 

against  disease  and  to  multiply  the  knowledge  of  our  infinite 
ignorances. 

But  all  those  blowers  and  trimmers  and  welders  of  glass 
were  idle  now  except  a  corporal's  guard.  These  Sirch  called 
to  his  aid.  Under  his  direction  they  drew  from  the  lehr 
when  it  had  been  heated  an  iron  box  about  the  shape  and 
size  of  a  coffin.  He  explained  that  he  had  heated  it  so  that 
it  would  not  chill  and  ruin  the  hot  glass  poured  into  it. 

Next  they  brought  forth  from  the  oven  the  figure  of  Clelia 
colored  to  the  life  and  standing  like  a  Joan  of  Arc  waiting 
for  the  fagots  to  be  lighted,  her  palms  gabled  in  prayer. 

Larrick's  heart  was  checked  in  his  breast  at  Clelia 's  sudden 
appearance  in  this  dull  chamber.  The  statue  was  so  like 
Clelia  that  he  could  not  believe  it  entirely  devoid  of  some 
part  of  her  soul.  It  hurt  him  to  see  it  so  roughly  dragged 
about  with  chains  and  grappling  hooks,  and  he  cried  out  in 
protest. 

Sirch  turned  to  him  quickly  and  tried  to  restore  his  calm. 
"It's  only  fire  clay,"  he  smiled. 

"That's  all  any  of  us  are,"  Larrick  groaned.  "I  can't 
bear  to  see  her  mistreated." 

The  idolater  does  not  really  imagine  that  the  idol  is  his 
god  or  goddess.  He  knows  it  is  only  an  image,  a  reminder 
of  an  invisible  belief.  He  does  not  really  worship  the  image, 
but  simply  addresses  his  worship  to  it. 

Yet  so  dear,  so  sacred  the  idol  becomes  that  by  and  by  it 
holds  the  believer's  heart  with  a  peculiar  spell,  and  he  who 
smashes  such  an  image  (as  the  Sultan  of  Mahomet  did  when 
he  rode  into  Christian  churches  and  shattered  with  his  mace 
the  "idols"  of  the  Madonna  and  her  Child)  deals  a  blow 
directly  upon  the  heart  of  the  faithful. 

So  Larrick's  heart  was  racked  with  pain  and  his  own 
flesh  seemed  to  shrivel  as  he  watched  the  laborers  hoist 
Clelia 's  image  into  the  air  and  slowly  lower  it  into  the  glowing 
furnace  of  the  iron  mold.  He  paced  the  narrow  passages  in 
a  mood  of  black  remorse  for  his  own  ruthlessness  in  urging 
this  mad  idea. 

But  Sirch  thought  only  of  his  own  glory  and  the  glory  he 
hoped  to  achieve.  He  believed  that  the  fire  clay  would  serve 


374  BEAUTY 

as  a  core  to  the  glass,  helping  it  to  cool  with  an  evenness 
impossible  if  the  interior  of  such  a  shaft  had  been  all  of  glass. 

Clelia  made  her  ascension  in  chains,  and  the  fire  clay  of 
her  image  had  an  uncanny  light,  the  enamels  gleaming  and 
shivering  with  the  commotion  of  the  heat  as  she  descended 
into  the  little  hell  of  the  mold  and  disappeared. 

The  mold  was  run  then  upon  a  wheeled  carrier  to  the 
mouvh  of  the  glass  tank.  There  a  tap  was  opened  and  a 
flashing,  boiling  slow  cascade  flowed  like  twisting  candy  into 
the  mold,  filling  every  crevice  and  gathering  about  the  hidden 
form  of  Clelia  as  the  lava  from  Vesuvius  caught  and  embraced 
and  smothered  and  drowned  the  pretty  Pompeiian  girls  it 
overtook. 

All  of  the  workmen  were  agog  with  anxiety  and  Sirch  was 
frantic  in  his  eagerness.  But  Larrick  felt  again  that  he 
assisted  in  an  infernal  rite. 

When  the  mold  was  full  and  overflowing  the  tap  was  shut 
off  and  the  glass  subjected  to  the  squeeze  of  compressed  air. 
There  followed  a  long,  long  wait  until  it  should  be  cool 
enough  to  be  removed  and  transferred  to  the  annealing  oven 
for  the  final  tempering. 

Sirch  was  in  a  travail  of  impatience  and  of  dread.  The 
others,  ignorant  of  what  he  knew,  were  in  haste  only  for  the 
finished  work.  They  could  not  understand  how  many  dan- 
gers threatened  success.  His  pride  and  his  hope  were  in- 
volved. He  had  attempted  what  other  experts  had  dismissed 
as  impossible.  Failure  would  mean  derision;  success  would 
be  triumph. 

At  last — a  very  belated  last — the  mold  seemed  to  be  cool 
enough  to  open.  It  was  broken  away  like  the  coconut's 
rough  shell  that  hides  the  white  flesh  within. 

Sirch  made  the  first  outcry,  and  it  was  one  of  rapture. 
The  others — the  artists;  the  little  congregation  of  glass- 
makers,  and  Larrick — quivered  with  welcome. 

For  a  vision  gladdened  their  eyes.  Clelia  stood  before  them 
in  a  magic  investiture  of  glass.  She  was  lost  in  a  haze  of 
light,  an  aureole  tangible  and  firm,  gleaming  and  pellucid 
as  ice  without  its  lethal  chill.  The  glass  was  still  haunted  by 
the  "red,"  a  faint  crimson  luster  tremulous  throughout  its 


THE   AFTERGLOW  375 

depth  and  gathering  here  and  there  in  little  pools  like  stains 
of  wine. 

They  saw  before  them  something  that  no  one  had  ever 
seen  before — a  trinity  of  the  arts,  sculpture,  painting,  glass- 
craft,  married  in  the  tender  name  of  love  for  the  pure  radi- 
ance of  beauty. 

The  others  were  hushed  with  awe,  but  Sirch  was  like  one 
gone  mad. 

"Stand  by  to  carry  my  masterpiece  to  the  annealing  fur- 
nace," he  cried,  "before  it  breaks." 

But  even  as  the  workmen  drew  close  there  was  a  terrifying 
crackle,  a  tinkle  of  falling  splinters — a  snow  of  sparkling 
flakes  about  the  ground.  And  Clelia  stood  divested,  stripped 
of  her  brief  glory.  The  light  that  had  been  woven  into  a 
robe  about  her  was  quenched. 


CHAPTER  IV 

others  groaned  with  despair  before  a  promised 
1  miracle  recalled  and  denied.  But  Sirch  only  swore  im- 
patiently. He  knew  too  well  the  fickleness  of  the  whimsical 
muse  of  glass.  He  had  held  victory  in  his  hand  and  he  would 
grasp  it  yet. 

"We've  seen  it  once  and  we'll  see  it  again.  Everybody 
said  it  was  impossible.  Everybody  is  always  a  fool  and  a 
coward.  What  glass  has  done  glass  will  do.  I've  learned 
something  from  this  experiment,  and  I'll  try  it  again  with  a 
batch  of  a  different  mixture.  I'll  keep  at  it  till  I  succeed. 
And  I  will  succeed,  if  I  have  to  make  a  hundred  trials." 

He  paused  to  turn  a  petitioning  glance  toward  Larrick 
and  added,  with  all  the  humility  of  the  artist  before  his 
necessary  patron,  "That  is,  if  Mr.  Larrick  is  willing  to  spend 
a  little  more  money." 

"  Money?"  Larrick  cried.  "  Of  course  I'll  give  you  money, 
all  you  need.  If  I  haven't  got  enough  I'll  steal  some  more." 

It  is  not  the  artists  alone  who  build  great  art.  Always 
there  is  a  passionate  business  man  somewhere  in  the  back- 
ground or  the  foreground  backing  him  up  or  beckoning  him 
on  forward. 

Sirch  nodded  and,  being  assured  of  his  collaboration,  dis- 
missed him  with  a  few  absent-minded  words.  The  genius 
was  already  far  away  in  a  cloud  realm  of  speculation. 

As  Larrick  rode  back  to  town  with  Randel  and  Burnley  he 
was  as  proud  as  both  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  when  they 
learned  that  the  Columbus  they  had  financed  had  invented 
a  new  continent. 

But  Handel's  hot  enthusiasm,  cooling  glasswise,  cracked 
under  the  strain  and  he  said,  with  a  depressing  cynicism: 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  this  curious  work  of  art 
when  you  get  it?" 


THE   AFTERGLOW  377 

Larrick  did  not  know  or  care.  He  was  already  impatient 
to  remove  himself  to  strange  scenes  where  he  could  yield  to 
the  temptations  swarming  about  him.  He  longed  to  yield, 
and  to  yield  without  restraint,  to  every  external  temptation; 
to  encourage  new  whims  from  within  and  meet  his  oppor- 
tunities halfway;  to  be  very  busy  with  new  interests  of 
any  sort  soever  and  distract  his  mind  from  the  grief  that 
was  a  perpetual  nightmare  from  which  he  could  never 
quite  awake. 

The  old  hermits  withdrew  into  the  desert  and  the  wilder- 
ness that  they  might  give  themselves  up  to  holy  thoughts  in 
a  region  of  such  discomfort  that  the  very  devils  would  be 
starved  out.  But  Larrick  wanted  to  withdraw  into  the 
thronged  and  ancient  cities  of  Europe  where  the  very  crowds, 
all  strange  to  him,  unknowing  and  unknown,  would  provide 
him  with  a  kind  of  solitude  and  keep  him  going  in  it. 

With  Mr.  Frewin's  help  he  set  aside  a  fund  for  his  income 
tax,  and  secured  a  passport.  He  bought  his  steamer  tickets 
and  his  steamer  rugs  and  other  things  that  ocean-goers 
advised  him  to  have. 

As  for  Nancy  Fleet  and  his  farewell  to  her,  he  hesitated 
between  telephoning  to  her  that  he  had  been  suddenly  called 
abroad  on  important  business  and  spending  the  leisure  of  the 
voyage  in  composing  a  long  letter  in  which  he  should  tell  her 
how  wonderful  she  was,  how  unworthy  he  was  of  her,  and 
how  much  happiness  he  wished  her. 

While  he  was  still  fretting  over  this  decision  he  was  called 
to  the  telephone  one  day  and  Walter  Sirch  shook  the  trans- 
mitter with  his  fierce,  "Eureka!" 

Persistence,  the  old  lion  tamer,  had  conquered  stubborn 
nature  and  tamed  the  beast  to  service. 

After  many  failures  Sirch  had  found  a  composition  that 
did  not  fall  apart  before  it  could  be  moved  into  the  annealing 
oven.  His  difficulties  had  not  ended  there;  he  had  lost 
more  than  one  image  in  the  reheating  and  the  cooling.  But 
now  he  had  brought  forth  from  the  lehr,  after  days  of  slow 
reduction  of  temperature,  a  shaft  of  glass  that  would  with- 
stand a  hammer  blow.  And  this  awaited  Larrick's  inspection. 

Larrick  gathered  Randel  and  Burnley  together  and  they 


378  BEAUTY 

made  all  haste  to  the  kilns,  where  Sirch  awaited  them  in  the 
childish  self-approval  of  a  Peter  Pan.  And  indeed  the  artist 
must  of  necessity  be  always  the  youth  that  never  will  grow 
up.  He  always  has  his  moments  when  he  thrills  with  a 
shameless  pride  in  being  the  wonderfulest  boy  that  ever  was. 

Sirch  had  earned  this  brief  insanity  by  days  and  nights  of 
ugly,  frantic  toil  and  the  bitter  conquest  of  temptations  to 
the  luxurious  repose  of  easy  despair. 

The  statue  was,  indeed,  a  rhapsody  of  beauty.  The  glass 
had  jailed  a  sunset  within  a  more  than  alabastrian  prison. 
Through  labyrinths  of  relucent  walls  a  restless  light  seemed 
to  wander,  groping  and  recoiling  and  always  about  to  escape, 
yet  never  quite  free.  Serene  and  divinely  content  in  a  home 
of  perfection,  Clelia  stood  in  eternal  peace,  as  if  she  had  fallen 
asleep  while  she  prayed  and  knew  that  her  prayers  were 
already  heard. 

The  witnesses  kept  silence  about  her  like  foreigners  led 
atiptoe  through  a  temple  where  a  woman  besought  her  un- 
known deity  in  a  mood  of  holiness. 

Then  they  withdrew  to  a  distance  that  they  might  escape 
the  struggling  floods  of  such  tears  as  drench  the  eyes  and  veil 
them  when  they  look  on  some  beauty  too  pure  for  mortal 
contemplation. 

They  regained  something  of  that  composure  which  enables 
men  to  look  into  one  another's  eyes  and  talk  of  earthly  things. 
They  regained  the  solid,  if  homely,  ground  of  fact. 

The  union  of  art  and  piety  had  built  a  strange  memorial 
for  so  volatile  a  girl  as  Clelia,  but  the  elements  were  common- 
place exceedingly. 

What  had  been  slimy  clay  had  been  shaped  to  human  form ; 
vegetables  and  minerals  had  been  ground  and  powdered  and 
blended  into  a  color  for  its  surface;  sands  that  the  sea  had 
beaten  to  dust  upon  the  shores  of  Belgium,  sands  that 
tramp  steamers  had  labored  with  across  the  Atlantic,  had 
been  melted  into  a  fuming  cream  and  cooled  to  a  luminous, 
illuminating  rock. 

The  collaboration  of  diggers  and  sailors,  longshoremen 
and  truck  drivers,  oil-well  crews  and  furnace  men,  pigment 
mixers  and  iron  molders,  laborers  of  every  degree  of  grime,. 


THE   AFTERGLOW  379 

and  artists  and  scientists,  had  been  necessary  to  make  visible 
the  dream  of  the  cowboy  with  the  broken  heart. 

And  all  this  toil  had  for  its  aim  and  its  result  a  picture  of 
a  girl  who  had  no  especial  gift  except  a  certain  grace  and 
gayety,  who  never  saved  a  nation  or  an  army  or  an  idea, 
who  never  even  had  a  husband  or  a  child,  who  wrote  nothing, 
painted,  carved,  enacted,  inspired  nothing  except  this  fruitful 
regret  in  the  soul  of  a  man  who  had  accomplished  no  more 
than  the  girl  he  mourned — unless  this  memorial  of  her  should 
be  accepted  by  those  who  saw  it  as  an  eye-gladdening,  heart- 
quickening  thing  to  be  grateful  for.  And  in  that  memorial 
Clelia  had  indeed  collaborated.  She  contributed  the  inspira- 
tion and  the  form,  Larrick  the  idea  and  the  money — and 
others  their  various  r61es. 

This  monument  would  strike  many  people  as  merely  curi- 
ous, cumbrous,  and  overelaborate.  Critics  would  grow 
strangely  angry  at  it.  If  it  had  been  like  other  statues  they 
would  have  called  it  conventional,  academic,  stodgy.  Now 
they  would  denounce  it  as  if  it  insulted  something  sacred  to 
them,  as  if  it  endangered  a  precious  heritage.  Not  knowing 
just  what  to  call  it,  they  would  call  it  harsh  names. 

But  it  was  done,  and  even  the  men  who  had  given  it  their 
ardor  could  only  wonder  what  next  to  do  with  it.  Larrick 
had  no  home  to  put  it  in,  and  few  people  would  have  wel- 
comed so  poignant  a  reminder  of  death. 

The  conspirators  for  beauty  feared  nobody  so  much  as 
the  parents  of  Clelia,  who  had  collaborated  in  the  building  of 
her  spirit  as  of  her  form.  They  had  furnished  the  chemicals 
and  the  warm  fluids  and  the  mold  in  which  Clelia  was  fused 
and  shaped  and  delivered  to  the  world.  And  that  living 
sculpture  had  been  endowed  with  astounding  powers  of 
growth,  of  self-repair,  and  of  motion,  and  with  passions 
that  sprang  from  what  they  might  encounter.  Yet  that 
leaping,  thinking,  speaking,  laughing,  loving  statue  had 
been  shattered  and  stilled  by  a  blow  and  nobody  could 
find  a  fragment  anywhere  either  of  the  flesh  or  the  soul 
that  had  made  it. 

Larrick  felt  guilty  enough  in  all  that  had  been  done  with 

Clelia's  body.    He  dreaded  what  her  parents  would  think  of 
25 


38o  BEAUTY 

him.  If  they  should  destroy  both  Larrick  and  the  statue  he 
would  hardly  blame  them. 

Randel  took  another  view:  "Clelia's  father  and  mother 
have  no  more  right  to  the  statue  of  Clelia  than  they  had  to 
her.  They  could  not  have  killed  her  without  committing 
murder.  They  could  not  have  sold  her,  or  even  married  her 
off,  without  her  consent.  The  patria  potestas  no  longer  holds. 

"Clelia's  soul  and  body  belonged  to  herself.  Where  her 
soul  is  we  don't  know.  But  we  do  know  that  it  deserted  her 
body  and  left  it  for  you  to  find.  It  belongs  to  the  world  now 
because  it  is  beautiful  and  because  it  will  light  up  a  dark 
corner. 

"Still,  if  we  exhibit  it  now  it  will  have  only  a  success  of 
scandal,  since  Clelia  belongs  yet  awhile  to  the  newspapers 
and  the  police.  Crowds  would  mob  the  place  to  see  it,  not 
because  of  its  poetry,  but  because  Clelia  was  murdered. 

"If  her  father  and  mother  should  see  it  now  it  would 
simply  tear  open  the  grief  that  time  is  trying  to  heal.  A  few 
years  from  now  they  can  look  at  it  and  take  a  great  joy  in 
it.  They  will  shed  tears,  but  they  will  be  like  rain  with  a 
rainbow  in  it. 

"The  statue  belongs  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art. 
I  think  I  can  persuade  the  curator  to  accept  it  as  a  tem- 
porary loan,  and  keep  it  in  a  secret  room  where  those  who 
have  a  right  to  see  it  can  go  in  and  commune  with  its  beauty. 

"In  a  few  years  it  can  be  quietly  unveiled  anonymously. 
It  could  be  announced  as  a  discovery  in  Italy,  smuggled  out 
of  that  country  secretly  to  evade  the  law.  It  could  be  de- 
scribed as  a  probable  masterpiece  of  the  Venetians  at  a  time 
when  the  craft  was  so  occult  that  assassination  was  the  pun- 
ishment for  any  member  of  the  guild  who  betrayed  to  a  for- 
eigner the  mysteries  of  glass. 

"Then  the  critics  could  fight  learnedly  over  it  and  write 
beautiful  things  about  the  lost  arts  of  the  ancients  and  the 
pitiful  degeneracy  of  modern  art.  And  then,  after  a  long 
while,  Clelia's  name  could  be  given  to  it.  By  that  time  she 
would  be  only  a  legend,  and  as  graceful  as  only  a  legend  can 
become.  Her  father  and  mother  would  either  have  joined  her 
in  death  or  they  would  be  so  used  to  her  absence  that  seeing 


THE   AFTERGLOW  381 

her  again  would  give  them  something  of  the  ecstatic  rapture 
of  witnessing  the  resurrection  and  transfiguration  of  their 
child. 

"All  we  need  is  time.  It  will  turn  what  would  be  an  ugly, 
cruel,  sensational  bit  of  hateful  Yankee  realism  into  a  deed 
of  piety  and  of  consecration  to  the  loftiest  ideals  of  beauty 
and  reverence." 

Larrick  was  not  quite  sure  of  everything  Randel  said,  but 
the  spirit  of  the  words  appeased  his  anxiety,  and  the  solution 
of  the  problem  had  at  least  the  comfort  of  deferment. 

So  he  gave  his  consent  and  Randel  set  about  the  art-politics 
necessary  to  the  success  of  his  plan. 

When  Larrick  had  paid  Sirch's  astounding  bill  of  expenses 
and  an  appropriate  fee  for  his  genius  his  wealth  was  dimin- 
ished by  many  thousands  of  dollars. 

He  was  strongly  tempted  to  let  Nancy  Fleet  see  what  he 
had  wrought  and  bought.  The  very  temptation  proved  how 
strong  a  hold  she  had  secured  upon  him;  how  much  the  rope 
she  had  cast  about  him  still  held  him.  The  more  he  fought 
and  twisted  the  more  he  seemed  to  feel  its  withe. 

Even  when  he  decided  that  he  would  not  show  her  the 
glorified  effigy  of  Clelia  it  was  because  he  feared  to  hurt  her 
by  subjecting  her  to  the  comparison,  by  reminding  her  how 
much  he  had  loved  Clelia,  and  contrasting  that  spiritual 
reverence  with  the  always  worldly  nature  of  his  approaches 
to  Nancy.  Nancy  had  had  none  of  the  unfair  advantages  of 
death  and  apotheosis. 

Larrick  gave  up  all  thought  of  bringing  the  two  women 
into  confrontation  and  hastened  his  plans  to  go  abroad.  Only 
two  days  intervened  between  him  and  his  flight,  and  his 
luck  had  still  kept  him  from  encountering  Nancy.  But  as  he 
came  out  of  a  sports  shop  on  Madison  Avenue,  where  he  had 
been  completing  his  equipment,  he  heard  a  sharp  tapping  on 
glass. 

He  whirled  and  caught  sight  of  Nancy  Fleet  peering  at  him 
and  gesticulating  through  the  window  of  her  limousine. 
The  car  drew  up  to  the  curb,  the  chauffeur  reached  back  and 
opened  the  door,  and  Nancy's  voice  came  forth.  There  was 
no  escaping  her  smile  and  her  outstretched  hand.  He  was 


382  BEAUTY 

surprised  to  see  her  and  surprised  to  find  how  glad  he  was  to 
see  her. 

She  did  not  upbraid  him  for  his  neglect,  and  that  was  the 
most  telling  rebuke  of  all.  It  left  him  to  rebuke  himself. 
She  had  that  habit  of  aristocratic  self-sacrifice,  the  meekness 
of  the  gentle  people  who  do  not  imagine  a  claim  or  press  it, 
whose  higher  pride  shows  itself  in  concealing  the  hurts  of 
neglect  and  resenting  only  open  affronts. 

This  made  it  easier  for  Larrick,  who  could  find  no  apology 
or  excuse  fit  for  the  occasion.  He  did  not  contradict  her  when 
she  increased  his  unkindness  by  assuming  that  it  was  un- 
intentional. 

"I  know  how  busy  you  must  have  been,  and  I  haven't 
bothered  you,  have  I?  I've  been  pretty  busy  myself — going 
in  for  charity  and  other  old-maid  sports. 

"I  don't  suppose  you  have  time  to  go  with  me  to  a  little 
affair.  It's  charity,  but  the  pill  is  well  disguised  in  sugar. 
There's  singing  and  dancing  and  afterward  a  luncheon — a  lot 
of  entertainment  and  only  a  tiny  little  shop  talk  about  starv- 
ing children.  But  I  suppose  you're  too  busy." 

His  gallantry  answered  for  him,  "I'm  never  too  busy  to 
steal  a  little  of  your  time." 

She  made  a  rather  wistful  face  at  this,  seeing  more  than 
he  meant  to  disclose,  seeing,  perhaps,  distresses  that  he 
hardly  knew  he  felt. 

He  stepped  into  the  car  and  it  rolled  on  to  the  Ritz- 
Carlton,  where  he  had  met  her  first,  and — he  supposed — 
would  perhaps  have  met  her  last. 


CHAPTER  V 

'"THEY  were  a  little  late  and  the  opening  musical  number 
1  was  ending.  It  was  followed  by  a  group  of  songs  and 
then  by  a  series  of  dances.  A  wealthy  young  woman  of 
family  had  taken  lessons  of  one  of  the  many  teachers  of 
dramatic  dancing.  Most  of  the  dramatic  quality  was 
furnished  by  the  revelation  of  girl  flesh. 

A  pianist  thumped  and  trilled  and  then  the  dancer  came 
forth  in  a  fantastic  costume  of  Oriental  leanings  with  Bakst 
revisions — a  huge  headdress,  very  little  bodice,  much 
slashed,  and  a  pair  of  white  silk  trousers  fluted  and  frilled. 

She  stepped,  twisted,  and  postured  in  gyrations  that  may 
have  been  Oriental,  but  were  certainly  not  Occidental. 

She  sidled  off  the  stage  to  much  polite  glove-muffled 
applause.  The  pianist  filled  in  with  noise  the  time  required 
for  her  change  and  then  struck  into  a  joyous  rhythm. 

The  girl  came  forth  again  as  a  Grecian  nymph,  her  only 
robe  a  short  tunic  that  fluttered  about  her  in  rivalry  with 
her  fluttering  hair.  She  circled  the  stage,  prancing  and 
bounding,  hurling  her  body  far  back,  and  beating  the  earth 
with  her  bare  toes  and  flinging  her  knees  high.  The  spirit 
of  youth  was  thus  presented  in  a  form  whose  daring  was 
growing  a  whit  conventionalized,  whose  nudity  was  becoming 
so  frequent  as  to  verge  on  tame  respectability — since  re- 
spectability is  largely  a  matter  of  repetition  and  general 
usage. 

She  was  a  pretty  thing,  just  between  girl  and  woman. 
There  was  a  something  of  Clelia  about  her  that  shook 
Larrick's  heart  and  renewed  rusty  sorrows.  Larrick  felt 
a  dreary  resentment  at  wasteful  fate,  realizing  how  many 
girls  there  were  alive  and  dead  and  yet  to  come  who  were  so 
much  like  Clelia.  He  had  recoiled  from  the  sight  of  four 
statues  of  her,  yet  here  she  was  and  there  she  was  alive  again, 


384  BEAUTY 

mischievous  and  shockingly  beautiful  as  ever.  There  was 
an  eternal  Clelia  dancing  about  the  earth.  There  were 
multitudes  of  Clelias. 

When  the  girl  had  galloped  off  the  stage  the  speaker  of  the 
day  walked  on  like  a  bearer  of  bad  news.  He  tried  not  to 
be  too  depressing,  and  praised  the  audience  for  its  well-fed 
look  and  air  of  prosperity.  He  emphasized  the  good  fortune 
of  America  in  having  suffered  so  much  less  from  the  war 
than  the  nations  of  Europe.  But  the  escape  from  devasta- 
tion was  the  obligation  to  help  carry  the  burden,  to  carry 
most  of  it,  as  after  an  earthquake  the  strong  must  aid  the 
weak,  who  have  burdens  enough  to  bear  in  their  pain  and 
their  discouragement. 

He  said  that  famine  had  been  a  merely  historical  word  to 
him  and  to  others  until  the  war  had  made  it  commonplace. 
Hunger  ruled  the  world  now  as  never  before.  The  sight  of 
one  starving  child  would  unnerve  most  of  us;  it  ought  not 
to  make  us  indifferent  just  because  millions  were  starving. 
That  form  of  consolation  by  multiplication  was  inhuman. 

We  have  pictures  enough  and  too  many,  he  said,  of  chil- 
dren perishing  slowly  for  lack  of  food.  We  have  seen  how 
they  look  when  they  starve  to  death.  But  we  are  too  far 
away  to  hear  their  cries  of  agony  as  the  vultures  of  hunger 
tear  at  their  living  entrails.  He  told  how  Capt.  Kenneth 
Roberts  had  described  the  famines  abroad,  and  used  an 
unforgetable,  an  almost  unbearable  phrase:  "I  have  seen 
many  who  were  starving  to  death.  But  in  that  next  room 
I  heard  a  young  girl  starve  to  death.  Did  you  ever  hear 
anyone  starve  to  death?" 

The  speaker  protested  that  he  did  not  want  to  be  brutal 
to  anyone,  and  had  no  right  to  be.  But  a  collection  was  to  be 
taken  up  for  the  salvation  of  little  children  from  unmerited 
torture.  He  added :  "There  is  to  be  a  luncheon  here  to-day, 
and  I  hope  you  will  all  enjoy  it.  Surely  you  will  like  it 
better  if  you  first  give  a  pittance  to  those  who  have  no 
money,  no  food,  and  scant  raiment.  If  there  is  anyone 
here  deaf  to  this  appeal  I  hope  the  food  will  stick  in  her 
throat. 

"Miss  Evelyn  has  danced  for  you  a  barefoot  dance  of 


THE   AFTERGLOW  385 

rapture.  I  have  asked  her  to  dance  again  another  barefoot 
dance  such  as  millions — think  of  it,  millions! — of  children 
are  dancing  to-day  as  they  stand  barefoot  outside  the  soup 
kitchens  and  find  the  soup  kitchens  closed — closed  because 
you — and  you! — and  you! — have  not  yet  paid  the  fee  you 
owe.  There  are  people  here  who  have  given  liberally  and 
faithfully.  There  are  also  men  and  women  here  who  have 
given  nothing,  but  spent  fortunes  upon  jewels  as  hard 
as  their  own  hearts,  and  each  jewel  is  the  tombstone  of 
hundreds  of  poor  little  weeping,  writhing,  aching,  screaming, 
slaughtered  innocents.  Don't  lift  a  morsel  of  food  to  your 
lips  to-day  until  you  have  earned  the  right  to  be  called 
human." 

He  retired,  regretting  tnat  his  earnestness  had  once  more 
throttled  his  wit,  and  that  he  had  harangued  where  humor 
would  have  been  more  welcome. 

He  was  hardly  gone  when  the  Eveiyn  girl  was  announced 
again  by  music — a  jig,  but  in  a  minor  key,  a  danse  macabre 
for  young  skeletons.  She  appeared  in  the  garb  of  a  wretched 
little  pauper.  What  flesh  she  revealed  peered  through  the 
rags  in  her  clothes.  She  ran  eagerly  to  an  imaginary  door, 
found  it  shut,  knocked  in  vain,  indicating  by  a  dancer's 
pantomime  that  hunger  gnawed  her  vitals. 

Then  the  cold  nipped  her  bare  feet  and  she  lifted  one  to 
rub  the  instep  on  the  other  calf.  She  raised  her  feet  alter- 
nately in  the  quickstep  of  freezing  misery.  She  was  so 
pretty  and  so  well  worth  keeping  alive  that  she  touched  the 
heart  more  deeply  than  a  child  more  gaunt  could  have  done. 

When  she  had  given  up  hope  and  dragged  her  frozen  feet 
off  the  stage  there  was  much  applause.  The  choregraphic 
art  had  done  better  than  represent  the  picture;  it  had  stirred 
the  imagination  and  made  each  spectator  recreate  the 
vision. 

A  collection  was  taken  now  and  as  the  basket  approached 
Larrick  he  grew  restive  and  perplexed.  Hearing  a  clink 
of  silver,  he  drove  his  hand  into  his  change  pocket.  But 
silver  seemed  too  petty  a  contribution.  He  took  out  a  roll 
of  bills.  But  he  had  little  money  with  him. 

Holdups  were  frequent  and,  besides,  he  had  heard  that 


386  BEAUTY 

actually  rich  men  carried  only  a  little  cash,  and  relied  on  a 
pocket  check  book  for  emergencies. 

Larrick  brought  out  his  check  book  and  lifted  a  fountain 
pen  from  its  clutch  on  his  waistcoat  pocket.  He  was  rash 
with  sympathy  and  planned  to  write  "one  hundred  dollars." 
He  hesitated  a  moment  and  wrote  "one  thousand." 

When  Nancy  Fleet's  quick  eye  caught  the  amount  she 
gripped  his  arm  and  whispered,  "Wonderful!" 

She  asked  him  to  take  luncheon  with  her  and  he  found 
that  she  was  renewing  her  old  captivation.  It  was  so 
superb  a  thing  to  be  alive.  He  watched  her  hands,  her  lips, 
her  exquisitely  managed  hunger.  He  heeded,  as  if  for  the 
first  time,  the  deep  velvet  of  her  eyes.  Her  hat  fascinated 
him,  her  sleeves,  the  rich  fabric  of  her  costume  and  her 
richer  skin. 

But  these  were  not  pleasant  to  consider.  He  was  Tantalus 
now,  and  he  had  no  right  to  reach  for  this  beautiful  woman. 
He  was  in  mourning.  As  he  ate  he  could  not  help  imagining 
that  famished  children  set  sharp  chins  on  the  edge  of  the 
table.  He  could  see  their  great  eyes  burning  with  envy.  He 
could  feel  lean,  clawlike  hands  clutching  at  the  food  he  did 
not  need  and  pleading,  huskily:  "Gimme!"  "Gimme 
enough  to  live  on!"  "Mister,  gimme  just  the  crust  of  your 
bread." 

In  all  languages  mobs  of  jostling  children  cried:  "Gimme! 
Mister,  gimme  just  only  enough  to  keep  me  from  droppin' 
under  the  table !" 

A  few  pennies  would  feed  a  child  an  astoundingly  long 
time.  The  great  armies  of  Saint  Hoover's  men  and  women 
saw  to  that,  braving  plagues  and  enduring  heartbreaks 
innumerable  in  the  most  beautiful  crusade  that  ever  graced 
the  world — warriors  for  no  race,  no  territory,  no  commerce, 
no  relics,  no  dogma,  no 'sect,  no  oppressive  disputatious 
creed,  destroyers  of  no  rival  temples  or  priests  or  govern- 
ments, saviors  of  life,  not  slaughterers,  an  army  without 
banners  or  music  or  weapons,  battling  for  humanity,  carrying 
bread  and  milk  and  medicine  and  warmth  wherever  there  was 
need.  The  bugle  call  was  the  cry  of  children;  the  spoils  of 
the  war  were  lives  redeemed  and  sufferings  diminished. 


THE   AFTERGLOW  387 

Larrick  was  not  used  to  crowds.  He  was  a  desert  man  by 
nature  and  long  habit.  He  was  not  trained  to  luxury  and 
he  had  not  come  to  feel  that  the  best  was  none  too  good  for 
him.  Rather,  the  worst  had  been  none  too  bad  for  him. 

Yet  here  he  sat  in  a  crowded  room  where  splendent  people 
fattened  themselves  on  delicacies  while  wraithly  crowds  of 
dying  children  and  mothers  and  fathers  flung  out  wasted 
hands  and,  no  longer  able  to  shriek,  whispered  for  help. 

Larrick  was  revolted  by  the  sight  of  the  others  and  by  his 
own  presence  among  them.  The  gorgeous  trappings  of  the 
scene  dismayed  him.  He  remembered  with  a  stab  of  shame 
that  in  a  day  or  two  he  was  to  sail  for  a  wild  revel  in  the  very 
Europe  where  these  miseries  abounded. 

He  knew  all  of  a  sudden  that  he  would  never  sail,  that 
Europe  would  be  no  refuge  from  his  gloom. 

He  was  amazed  at  his  own  cruelties.  His  horse  had 
bucked  and  flung  him  into  an  undreamed-of  wealth,  and  he 
had  bought  nothing  with  it  but  expensive  misery  for  himself, 
while  throngs  that  he  might  have  saved  had  already  gone 
swirling  down  the  black  waters  of  anguish  and  death. 

He  grew  so  restive  that  Nancy  Fleet  begged  him  not  to  let 
her  keep  him  from  any  engagement.  He  accepted  the  conge, 
and  when  she  mentioned  that  she  would  be  home  that 
evening  if  he  cared  to  see  her  before  he  sailed  he  promised 
to  call  and  hurried  away. 

Wherever  he  went  he  felt  that  battalions  of  children 
hobbled  at  his  heels,  whispering:  "Gimme!  Gimme!"  He 
was  like  a  Pied  Piper  who  could  not  escape  from  the  children 
enticed  by  the  music  of  his  money. 

He  fled  at  last  to  his  bank  to  escape  them.  He  had  put 
in  his  book  to  be  balanced  before  he  sailed  so  that  he  might 
know  where  he  stood  financially.  He  asked  for  it  now  and 
was  shocked  to  find  how  much  less  there  was  to  his  credit 
than  he  had  supposed.  A  bundle  of  canceled  checks  came 
with  the  book  and  he  knew  that  nearly  all  of  them  had 
been  wasted  on  ostentation  or  spendthrift  heedlessness. 

He  deducted  from  his  balance  the  check  he  had  written 
for  the  children  and  in  a  mood  of  desperate  zeal  for  a 
complete  atonement  wrote  a  check  for  the  whole  remainder 


388  BEAUTY 

payable  to  the  order  of  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  Allied 
reliefs. 

He  put  this  in  an  envelope  he  found  in  the  writing  room  of 
the  bank,  addressed  and  stamped  it,  and  dropped  it  in  the 
post  box  at  the  door. 

The  moment  he  heard  the  iron  jaws  clamp  shut  on  it  he 
realized  how  precipitate,  how  suicidal  his  deed  had  been. 
He  would  have  recalled  the  sum  and  split  it  with  the  children. 
But  it  was  too  late.  He  might  have  stopped  the  check, 
but  he  was  incapable  of  so  shrewd  an  action. 

The  exaltation  that  should  have  glorified  the  generosity 
was  denied  him.  He  felt  himself  a  melodramatic  fool  who 
had  beggared  himself  in  a  moment  of  maudlin  sympathy. 
But  beggared  he  was,  and  profanity  would  not  mend  his 
insanity. 

He  mocked  himself  with  the  gambler's  solace,  "Easy  come, 
easy  go!"  and  trudged  up  Fifth  Avenue,  a  penniless  tramp. 


CHAPTER  VI 

IN  his  earlier  days  Larrick  would  chase  a  horse  a  mile  to 
save  himself  a  half-mile  walk.  In  New  York  he  had 
acquired  the  taxi  habit.  He  put  up  his  finger  now  to  sum- 
mon a  cab  to  take  him  to  the  Frewin  home.  He  brought  his 
hand  down  with  a  snap,  remembering  that  he  was  no  longer 
a  quicksilver  king.  From  now  on  he  must  walk. 

He  had  a  little  money  on  his  person,  but  he  must  begin 
to  save  until  he  could  earn  some  more.  But  how  could  he 
earn  more?  His  only  trade  was  cattle.  Instead  of  going  to 
Paris  he  would  best  make  haste  to  Brewster  County,  where 
he  belonged. 

In  his  reckless  humor  he  resolved  to  lose  no  time,  but 
get  right  back.  He  walked  up  Fifth  Avenue  now  as  if  he 
were  on  a  farewell  patrol,  a  long  farewell,  not  only  to  his 
greatness,  but  to  a  city  in  which  he  had  found  little  but 
kindliness,  eagerness  for  happiness,  a  relentless  search  for 
beauty  in  its  countless  phases. 

He  found  Norry  Frewin  at  the  house  and  told  him  what 
had  happened.  Norry  was  aghast.  He  called  Larrick  the 
most  outrageous  names  with  the  most  disarming  affection. 
He  offered  to  beg,  borrow,  or  steal  enough  money  to  set 
him  up  in  business. 

But  Larrick  had  resigned  himself  to  the  loss  of  wealth 
as  of  beauty  and  of  love.  He  shook  his  head  at  every  sug- 
gestion and  he  smiled  foolishly  as  he  said  with  a  hangdog 
meekness  and  a  reversion  to  his  old  uncouthnesses  of  speech : 

"Reckon  I'll  have  to  ask  you  to  return  that  little  sum  I 
loaned  you  so  I  can  pay  my  fare  back  to  Brewster.  Pop 
Milman  will  take  me  on  again  prob'ly.  If  he  won't,  some- 
body will." 

Norry  flushed  a  little,  remembering  how  Larrick  had 
funded  his  own  return  to  civilization.  It  hurt  him  to  have  to 


390  BEAUTY 

ship  Larrick  back  to  the  desert.  But  he  could  not  persuade 
him  to  stay. 

While  the  mood  was  on  him  Larrick  determined  to  catch 
the  first  train  out.  It  would  save  him  at  least  from  the 
fiery  ordeal  of  another  interview  with  Nancy  Fleet.  He  was 
afraid  to  subject  himself  to  the  temptations  of  her  presence. 
His  heart  swung  toward  her  too  heavily  when  she  set  her 
clinging  gaze  upon  him;  his  arms  yearned  too  fiercely  to  fill 
themselves  with  her  warm  body. 

He  begged  Norry  to  telephone  her  that  he  had  been  sum- 
moned "home "  unexpectedly.  The  word  home  had  a  bitter 
taste  on  his  tongue,  for  he  had  no  home  but  homelessness. 

It  was  not  easy  to  break  from  the  arms  of  Norry's  mother, 
who  called  herself  his  own.  But  he  would  not  linger,  even 
to  tell  Mr.  Frewin  good-by. 

His  trunks  were  piled  on  a  taxicab  and  his  last  splurge 
was  the  reckless  tipping  of  the  Frewin  servants. 

The  ride  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station  was  elegiac  with 
exile.  He  loved  New  York  more  than  ever  and  he  hardly 
managed  to  overcome  the  spell  that  fastened  upon  him  as 
with  restraining  hands. 

His  heart  ached  as  he  bade  Norry  good-by.  The  two  men 
felt  a  deep  mutual  gratitude  and  the  jealousies  that  had 
almost  made  them  enemies  were  but  the  dross  of  the  past. 

Larrick  hurried  down  the  iron  steps  to  the  deep  tunnel 
where  the  train  waited  for  him,  waved  to  Norry  with  a 
mockery  of  cheer,  and  entered  his  car.  The  engine  dragged  it 
away  and  dived  beneath  the  Hudson,  emerged  again  upon 
the  New  Jersey  flats,  and  began  the  long  haul  south. 

Larrick  came  north  in  a  drawing  room  and  went  back  in 
an  upper  berth.  The  man  who  had  the  lower  and  shared 
with  him  the  seat  during  the  day  was  fat  and  bulged  across 
the  forward-looking  seat',  compelling  Larrick  to  ride  back- 
ward. But  he  liked  that,  for  his  hopes  were  retroverted. 
He  was  leaving  a  bright  future  behind  him. 

His  seatmate  wanted  to  talk,  but  Larrick  wanted  to  re- 
member. He  escaped  to  the  club  car  and,  staring  aft,  let 
his  thoughts  pay  out  as  if  his  soul  were  a  spool  of  thread 
and  one  end  of  it  in  Nancy  Fleet's  hand. 


THE   AFTERGLOW  391 

It  was  his  habit  to  repent  nearly  everything  he  did  or  said. 
He  was  bitterly  remorseful  now  for  leaving  New  York  with- 
out seeing  Nancy.  What  right  had  he  to  insult  her  so? 
It  was  only  now  that  he  realized  what  discourtesy  he  had 
shown  her. 

He  drove  himself  to  the  writing  desk  and  wasted  many 
sheets  of  the  Pullman  Company's  paper.  He  dreaded  the 
pen  at  best  and  found  it  a  more  bucking  steed  than  any 
broncho.  But  his  first  problem  was  the  first  word.  How 
should  he  address  Nancy?  There  had  been  such  a  strange 
mixture  of  the  utmost  formality  and  the  utmost  familiarity 
in  their  dealings,  that  they  had  not  yet  come  to  first  names, 
though  they  had  been  far  more  than  friends. 

He  compromised  at  last  on  the  word  that  sweetens  so 
much  of  the  Southern  speech: 

HONEY, — This  is  the  twenty  first  letter  Ive  started  and  if  you 
don't  get  it  youll  get  the  thirtieth  maybe.  I  been  crossing  out 
and  tearing  up  till  the  porter  has  a  headache. 

I  hope  Norry  said  goodby  for  me  like  I  told  him  to.  It  like  to 
killed  me  to  go  without  seeing  you.  But  I  knew  if  I  saw  you  all 
by  yourself  I'd  go  crazy  as  per  usual  and  treat  you  rough  and 
ask  you  to  marry  me  and  promise  to  make  you  the  happiest  woman 
in  the  world.  But  I  couldent  even  feed  you  or  buy  what  few 
clothes  you  women  need  nowadays  let  alone  make  you  happy, 
for  I  couldent  even  keep  you  in  the  air  youre  used  to  breathing. 

You  blame  near  ruined  me,  honey,  when  you  took  me  to  that 
charity  meeting  and  got  me  full  of  something  like  old  fashioned 
crying  whiskey.  After  I  left  you  and  before  I  could  sober  up 
I  sent  my  last  red  to  your  starving  children  comittee.  I  dont 
know  how  many  it  will  feed  but  Im  starved  out  for  sure. 

Im  as  poor  now  as  I  used  to  was  and  there  aint  any  poorer 
than  that  so  I  got  to  get  back  to  the  cattle  country  where  I  belong. 

I  got  no  right  to  love  you  honey  but  I  do.  I  feel  like  somehow 
I  was  shot  up  in  the  sky  as  far  as  the  first  big  stars,  and  now  Im 
falling  back  to  the  hard  old  earth  and  I  cant  take  you  back  with 
me.  But  the  brightest  star  that  shines  over  the  desert  Im  going 
to  name  it  Nancy  Fleet.  And  111  watch  you  up  there  long  after 
you  forget  you  ever  saw  me. 

There  is  so  terrible  much  to  thank  you  for  Nancy  Fleet.  You 
took  me  round  the  sky  with  you  and  I  will  never  get  over  it.  I 
dont  want  to.  Remembering  you  is  all  the  riches  I  got  left. 


392  BEAUTY 

Maybe  I  will  write  to  you  and  maybe  I  wont  but  111  never  stop 
thinking  of  you  honey.  Adiosl  AdiosI 

GAD  LARRICK. 

His  spelling  was  as  bad  as  many  a  prince's.  But  that 
was  the  letter  he  sealed  and  addressed  and  handed  to  the 
porter  to  mail  at  the  first  stop.  He  felt  now  that  he  had 
finished  with  Nancy  Fleet  even  more  than  with  Clelia. 

He  was  completely  ashamed  of  his  soul.  He  felt  as  good- 
for-nothing  as  one  of  the  countless  sagebrush  bushes  he  had 
seen  uprooted  and  blown  across  the  desert.  When  it  was 
alive  it  was  unimportant,  and  when  it  was  dead  it  mattered 
even  less  where  the  wind  kicked  it. 


CHAPTER  VII 

IN  the  welter  of  sand  along  the  Rio  Grande  there  was  no 
hint  of  the  blizzards  that  avalanched  upon  New  York 
late  that  February  after  a  mild  winter.  Gad  Larrick  rarely 
saw  the  newspapers,  and  those  he  saw  had  little  to  say  of  the 
metropolis  except  as  a  home  of  vice  and  crime  and  predatory 
capitalists  conspiring  against  the  prosperity  of  the  rest  of  the 
country. 

Larrick  knew  better.  He  knew  what  goodness  was  alert 
there,  what  simple  friendly  people  were  living  out  their  lives 
as  handsomely  as  they  could.  But  the  towers  and  the  canons 
of  the  streets  and  the  millions  swarming  among  them  were 
already  only  a  part  of  an  old  dream. 

The  Milmans  had  taken  him  back  on  the  ranch  with  loud 
rejoicing  and  given  him  what  hospitality  they  could.  If 
they  thought  of  their  prodigal  as  a  failure  and  a  wastrel 
they  never  let  him  know  it. 

The  old  customs  fitted  him  like  a  pair  of  old  boots  slipped 
into  after  a  dance  in  tight  patent-leather  pumps.  He 
was  soon  adapting  himself  to  the  cattle,  whose  needs  were 
supreme,  little  as  their  whims  were  regarded. 

Ma  Milman  tried  to  cheer  him  up  and  she  took  him  for 
long  rides  in  the  handsome  car  he  had  bought  her.  It  was 
somewhat  dilapidated  from  sandblast  and  rocky  trail,  but  it 
still  reminded  him  too  much  of  New  York  and  of  that 
Nancy  Fleet  who  had  seemed  to  nest  in  a  limousine.  He 
preferred  to  go  back  to  the  saddle  and  he  cultivated 
solitude. 

In  the  eternal  summer  of  that  region  he  forgot  such 
Northern  things  as  the  seasons.  He  lost  track  of  the 
calendar  and  did  not  realize  that  the  winter  had  melted  into 


394  BEAUTY 

spring  and  the  spring  had  blazed  into  summer,  except  that 
it  was  a  little  hotter  than  before. 

One  afternoon  as  he  slouched  across  the  back  of  a  slumping 
cayuse,  drifting  across  the  blistered  prairie  after  a  vain 
search  for  stray  cattle,  Larrick  noted  that  the  sky  was 
packed  with  clouds.  They  rode  across  the  heavens  far  above 
the  desert  and  mocked  the  yearning  sands  with  a  taunt  of 
rain.  There  was  no  chance  of  rain  at  that  time  of  year  and 
the  clouds  were  merely  scenery.  They  reminded  him  of  the 
mountain  chains  of  high  buildings,  of  the  New  York  he  had 
seen  from  across  the  Hudson — that  vastitude  of  wealth  and 
industry  and  beauty. 

Then  the  wind  shifted  and  opened  the  clouds  and  they 
reminded  him  of  the  crowded  traffic  of  Fifth  Avenue,  massed 
limousines  in  a  jumble  of  luxury,  millionaire  crowding  mill- 
ionaire and  black  limousine  impeding  black  limousine.  He 
felt  for  a  moment  the  hatred  of  the  poor  for  the  rich,  of  the 
desert  for  the  miserly  clouds. 

But  he  soon  recalled  that  when  he  was  one  of  the  rich  he 
found  them  to  be  nothing  but  ordinary  people  who  had 
gathered  money  somehow  and  would  relinquish  it  in  showers 
when  the  right  appeal  shook  them  up. 

The  rich  were  the  rain  gatherers,  the  high  travelers. 
Like  the  clouds  themselves,  they  had  come  up  from  the  earth 
and  would  go  back  again.  The  desert  was  pauperdom, 
idleness,  inertia,  ignorant  or  unprofitable  toil,  and  vain 
agitation.  The  sky  was  opportunity,  inspiration,  luck, 
perseverance  and  its  reward. 

The  poor  must  seek  beauty  in  the  sight  of  distant  skies 
and  mountains,  smooth  landscapes,  homespun  sentiments 
about  contentment,  and  honest  worth.  The  rich  could 
build  with  beauty,  play  with  it,  juggle  it. 

All  his  own  energetic  ambitions  had  died  of  thirst.  The 
unflagging  heat  had  burnt  out  his  initiative,  his  very  will  to 
will.  Ambition's  pale  caricature,  envy,  was  all  that  he 
could  attain,  and  contentment's  harsh  sister,  despair,  was 
his  housekeeper. 

So  dejected  he  was  to-day  that  when  his  half-baked  horse 
shambled  across  a  dry  arroyo  where  nothing  flowed  but  sand, 


THE   AFTERGLOW  395 

and  stumbled  over  a  heap  of  black  rock,  Larrick  did  not 
observe  it  until  he  had  passed. 

His  stewing  brain  so  slowly  considered  what  his  eyes 
transmitted  along  the  flaccid  nerves  that  the  horse  had 
traveled  many  yards  before  he  could  perform  the  simplest 
processes  of  reasoning. 

Like  a  defective  under  the  Binet  tests,  Larrick's  reactions 
were  subnormal.  But  gradually  his  torpid  brain  saw  what 
his  scorched  eyes  had  seen. 

' '  Cinnabar !     Mercury ! "  he  gasped  aloud. 

The  two  words  like  flints  struck  a  spark  that  caught  the 
deadwood  of  his  being  with  a  little  fire. 

He  wheeled  his  protesting  horse  in  a  lazy  circle  and 
walked  it  back  along  his  path  until  he  returned  to  the  patch 
of  mercury-bearing  rock.  It  was  a  larger  patch  than  the 
one  that  had  sent  him  up  into  the  clouds  of  wealth. 

When  he  raised  his  head  to  look  about  and  find  where  he 
was  the  sun  lashed  his  eyeballs  like  a  rawhide  quirt  and 
brought  a  few  sharp  tears  to  their  rescue.  He  had  not  sus- 
pected that  there  was  so  much  water  in  the  desert  as  there 
was  on  his  eyelids. 

He  stared  at  the  dull  mineral  and  talked  to  himself, 
mainly  repeating  over  and  over  a  somewhat  inappropriate 
formula,  "Well,  I'll  be  gawdam." 

He  slid  off  to  the  ground  and  studied  the  black  mass  with 
its  blotches  of  red.  He  walked  around  it  and  followed  it 
up  the  hollow  of  the  arroyo. 

A  rattlesnake  sprung  a  noise  like  an  alarm  clock  with  the 
bell  removed.  Larrick's  hand  went  to  his  holster  and 
brought  out  his  gun,  while  his  eyes  followed  the  directions 
of  his  ears. 

He  made  out  a  coil  like  a  fat  rope  of  wet  sand  thrown 
down  on  the  floor  of  dry  sand.  The  monster  was  swelling 
and  shivering  with  wrath,  the  erect  spike  of  his  tail  making 
a  glimmer  in  the  air  as  its  harsh  trill  rose  in  a  fiendish 
crescendo. 

Larrick  was  too  far  away  to  be  reached  if  it  flung  its 
fanged  head  at  him.  He  was  too  indolent  of  temper  to 
answer  the  challenge  with  a  bullet.  What  was  the  use 

26 


396  BEAUTY 

of  killing  a  snake  here  and  there?  There  were  always 
more. 

It  was  less  mercy  than  fatigue  and  more  loneliness  than 
mercy  that  led  him  to  greet  the  desert  bravo  with  ridicule: 

"Ah,  there,  Coykendall!  Go  on  back  to  your  fambly. 
As  Coyky  would  say,  you're  not  a  self-made  snake,  but  a 
God-made  worm.  Your  lady  loves  you,  I  reckon,  and 
you're  all  she's  got,  so  go  on  along  home !  Go  on  now  before 
I  bounce  a  piece  of  this  valu'ble  cinnabar  offen  your  flat 
head!" 

The  snake  moved  off,  sullenly,  with  tail-uttered  curses  and 
defiances.  Perhaps  he  went  home — and  perhaps  not. 

Larrick  forgot  him  and  returned  to  the  study  of  his  new 
Golconda.  He  sagged  down  till  he  sat  on  his  heels  and 
pondered  the  cinnabar  stupidly,  hardly  so  much  thinking 
as  maundering. 

As  far  as  he  could  remember,  this  region  had  never  been 
claimed  by  anybody.  Apparently  a  new  fortune  had  been 
dumped  at  his  feet  by  this  nagging  luck  of  his.  Run  away 
from  love  and  luck  and  they  will  follow  you.  So  he  had 
heard.  It  looked  likely. 

Well,  supposing  it  was,  what  of  it  ?  What  was  the  use  of 
getting  rich  again? 

He  could  go  back  to  New  York  or  go  on  over  to  Europe. 
But  what  was  the  use  of  that?  It  would  be  a  long,  hard 
ride  to  find  more  trouble.  If  he  had  all  the  cinnabar  in  the 
world,  it  wouldn't  bring  back  Clelia.  And  Nancy  by  now 
must  have  flirted  her  head  off  with  a  hundred  other  men. 
She  was  at  Nooport,  prob'ly,  shoshin'  round  in  the  surf 
with  nothin'  much  on,  and  that  wet. 

The  thought  of  surf  shook  him  awake  a  little.  He  re- 
membered Coney  Island  and  its  outlook  upon  a  desert  of 
water  vaster  than  even  this  ocean  of  drought.  He  seemed 
to  feel  a  great  sierra  rising  from  the  sea  with  a  snow  of  foam 
along  its  crest.  He  bent  his  head  as  it  rolled  toward  him  and 
concaved  above  him,  thunderous  with  joy  and  greening  into 
sunshot  emerald,  then  plunging  upon  him  in  a  cold  shock  of 
glory,  an  earthquake  rush,  and  an  angelic  exhilaration. 

Its  passage  left  him  breathing  deep,  his  blood  hurrahing, 


THE   AFTERGLOW  397 

his  flesh  in  a  carousal  of  well-being,  his  voice  in  an  uproar  of 
Titanic  joy.  He  had  met  the  ocean  and  it  was  his. 

When  he  opened  his  eyes  he  was  once  more  a  squat  toad 
on  a  black-red  rock  pile,  bent  beneath  the  hammering  sun. 
The  only  billow  that  had  passed  over  him  was  a  puff  from 
the  furnaces  of  hell  rolling  dead  clumps  of  sagebrush  over 
and  over  and  sifting  sand  on  cactus  and  scorpion  and  rattle- 
snake and  furry  tarantula. 

Larrick  sighed  a  hot  sigh.  He  felt  as  he  had  felt  at 
times  when  he  had  been  lost  and,  all  but  mad  with  the  heat, 
had  stumbled  upon  a  water  hole  and  dared  not  drink  lest  he 
die  of  the  too-quick  slaking  of  his  thirst. 

Mankind  is  always  blundering  in  a  narrow  corridor  be- 
tween the  fatalities  of  too  much  and  too  little. 

Larrick  wondered  which  he  really  wanted  to  do — to  stay 
put  in  this  dismal  lifelessness  or  to  make  another  dash  for 
liberty.  He  was  too  weary  to  want  anything  much. 

He  was  too  weary  to  ride  back  to  the  ranch  house  with 
the  news.  His  decision  to  sleep  on  the  problem  where  he 
found  it  was  less  a  decision  than  an  inability  to  move  on. 

He  usually  carried  in  his  saddle  pack  a  little  provender 
for  emergencies,  and  now  he  began  to  gather  fuel.  There 
was  a  pocket  of  sweet  water  not  far  away  and  the  sand  was 
mattress  enough  for  sleep. 

The  smoke  of  his  fire  went  up  straight  as  a  slim  sapling 
in  the  still  air,  save  when  it  was  twisted  by  an  infrequent 
breath  like  the  gasp  of  one  sleeping  fitfully  in  a  fever.  By 
and  by  the  bacon  and  potatoes  clicked  and  sputtered  in  the 
little  frying  pan.  Mr.  Larrick  was  dining  alone  at  his 
club. 

The  sun  was  westering  now  with  a  seeming  increase  of 
speed  as  it  neared  the  horizon.  The  east  was  not  so  blind- 
ing and  Larrick's  eyes  were  lifted  to  that  horizon. 

He  thought  he  saw  something  move  along  the  ridge — a 
lost  steer,  perhaps.  No,  it  was  a  horse — a  horse  and  a 
rider — a  Mexican,  perhaps.  Larrick  made  sure  of  his  gun, 
though  Mexico  had  surprised  the  world  with  a  blissful  era 
of  peace  after  the  sudden  overthrow  of  the  Carranzistas 
and  the  death  of  the  bearded  old  tyrant  in  the  ruins  of  his 


398  BEAUTY 

own  dynasty.  The  one-armed  Obregon,  descendant  of  the 
O'Briens,  administered  such  prosperity  now  that  the  Border 
was  for  the  nonce  at  least  a  word  without  menace. 

As  soon  as  the  horse  was  clear  of  the  hill  and  silhouetted 
against  the  sky  Larrick  saw  that  the  rider  was  not  a  Mexican, 
not  a  man  at  all,  but  a  woman,  wearing  what  used  to  be 
called  man's  clothes.  She  was,  of  course,  all  the  more 
feminine,  despite  the  innumerable  romances  built  upon  the 
manifest  fallacy  that  a  woman  is  disguised  instead  of  em- 
phasized in  breeches. 

Larrick  would  have  thought  her  to  be  Ma  Milman  or  one 
of  her  daughters,  except  that  the  rider,  whoever  she  was, 
was  no  plainswoman.  She  and  her  desert  steed  had  come 
to  a  complete  misunderstanding.  The  horse  was  ugly,  and 
she  bewildered  but  determined. 

All  this  Larrick's  practiced  eye  made  out  in  a  brief  scrutiny. 
He  rose  by  his  fire  and  waved  his  hat  and  shouted.  The 
high  feather  of  smoke  and  the  heliographic  flashes  from  the 
hat  caught  the  woman's  eye  at  last,  and  Larrick  could  see 
that  she  stood  up  in  her  stirrups  and  waved  her  hand. 

Then  her  horse  came  plunging  down  the  ridge  and  dodging 
in  and  out  among  the  obstacles  of  mesquite,  cactus,  and 
Spanish  bayonet. 

Before  long  the  horse  was  enlarging  into  full  vision  against 
a  background  cloud  of  sand  dust. 

The  rider  was  Nancy  Fleet. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

TARRICK  almost  went  over  backward  into  his  own  fire. 
JL-rf  He  believed  that  he  was  locoed,  seeing  things.  Nancy 
could  only  be  a  mirage. 

But  her  horse  was  no  mirage.  It  charged  straight  upon 
Larrick  and  his  whinnying  horse.  He  advanced  to  meet  it, 
and  Nancy's  steed,  as  was  its  custom,  stopped  short  just  in 
front  of  him  by  jabbing  its  forefeet  into  the  sand.  Nancy, 
forgetting  her  horsemanship  in  her  hysterical  joy  at  finding 
Larrick,  continued  her  progress,  flew  over  the  horse's  bowed 
head,  and  bowled  Larrick  over. 

They  rolled  together  in  the  soft  sand  and  unscrambled 
themselves  with  hilarious  laughter.  They  rose  to  their  feet, 
shocked  out  of  all  dignity,  and  fell  into  a  mutual  embrace, 
while  the  horses  stared  at  them  in  disapproval. 

When  they  grew  coherent  enough  to  ask  and  answer 
questions  Larrick  found  out  everything  in  a  disordered 
jumble. 

The  Milmans,  she  began,  had  offered  to  send  for  him, 
but  she  had  insisted  on  riding  after  him  alone.  They  had 
told  her  that  she  would  get  lost,  but  she  had  bullied  them 
into  silence.  She  had  naturally  got  lost,  hopelessly.  Her 
Central  Park  school  of  riding  had  driven  her  broncho  out  of 
his  wits  and  he  had  returned  the  compliment. 

She  had  grown  horribly  afraid  and  had  expected  to  leave 
her  bones  to  bleach  on  the  sand  along  with  the  horned 
skulls  and  skeletons  of  cattle  that  furnished  their  own 
tombstones. 

Larrick  felt  an  increase  of  preciousness  and  beauty  in 
the  thought  of  what  a  death  she  might  so  easily  have  found 
out  here  in  what  she  called  "this  museum  of  horrors." 

The  one  thing  he  wanted  to  ask,  of  course,  was  what 


400  BEAUTY 

under  the  blazing  heavens  could  have  brought  her,  anyway. 
But  it  seemed  hardly  Southern  hospitality  to  greet  a  guest 
on  the  doorstep  with  such  a  cold  demand.  He  waited  for 
her  to  tell  him.  But  she  had  no  curiosity  in  a  matter  she 
knew  so  well  and  she  asked  questions  of  her  own. 

She  was  in  a  fierce  need  of  water.  She  gulped  like  a 
thirsty  child  from  the  trough  of  his  folded  hat  brim.  She 
would  have  made  a  riot  in  New  York  if  a  servant  had 
brought  her  brackish  water  or  a  glass  that  did  not  glisten. 
She  adapted  herself  with  equal  pliancy  to  the  task  of  gnaw- 
ing his  bacon  and  potatoes  from  the  more  than  suspicious 
tin. 

"This  is  a  little  different  from  the  Ritz-Carlton  where  we 
first  met — yes?  But  the  food  tastes  better." 

She  toasted  him  in  his  unsettled  coffee  and  made  a  loving 
cup  of  the  battered  tarnished  thing  he  had  cooked  it  in. 
Then  she  encouraged  his  curiosity  by  saying: 

"You're  probably  wondering  why  I  came  down  here. 
Have  you  forgotten  that  night  in  my  car  when  you  were  so 
bold  and  free?  You  invited  me  to  call  on  you,  and  said 
that  if  I  came  you'd  give  me  the  key  to  Texas.  Remember  ? ' ' 

He  smiled  sadly,  his  wonderment  frustrated  again.  She 
went  on: 

"You  told  me  you  used  to  keep  yourself  company  by 
imagining  a  girl  sitting  cross-legged  by  your  fire  and  you 
holding  onto  her  with  one  hand  and  rolling  a  cigarette  with 
the  other.  Remember?" 

He  nodded  tormentedly  and  took  the  hint,  putting  his 
arm  out  to  enfold  her,  as  she  seemed  to  require,  but  she 
edged  away,  saying: 

"I've  learned  to  roll  my  own  with  one  hand,  thank  you. 
Looky!" 

And  she  took  from  her  pocket  the  makings  and,  with  a 
little  pardonable  pride,  twisted  herself  a  cigarette,  licked  the 
edge  of  it,  and  struck  a  match  with  her  thumb  nail  as  she 
had  seen  him  do. 

He  rolled  over  and  beat  the  sand  with  his  hands,  laughing 
enormously  at  the  foolishness  of  her  deed.  He  had  not 
laughed  so  hard  since  he  left  the  Adirondacks,  and  he 


THE   AFTERGLOW  401 

wondered  why  he  laughed  now.  But  it  is  asinine  to  ask  a 
joke  why  it  amuses. 

A  great  drought  in  his  soul  was  already  broken.  Lavghter 
was  the  cool  spring  gurgling  up  in  the  desert  of  life  and 
making  a  green  space  about  it,  quenching  the  fires  of  thirst. 

Larrick  felt  strong  enough  not  to  question  the  cross- 
legged  witch  who  had  come  oversky  on  a  broomstick  to  sit 
at  his  fire  and  breathe  smoke. 

But  before  he  could  speak  she  gave  a  squeal  and  scrambled 
to  her  knees  in  fright.  She  had  glanced  over  her  shoulder 
at  a  rustle  in  the  sage  and  thought  of  snakes.  Her  eye  had 
fallen  on  a  black  object  near  her  hand,  a  black  thing  blobbed 
with  red.  The  gathering  dusk  made  it  vague  and  the 
blown  sand  seemed  to  give  it  motion. 

"Is  that  a  ta — tarantula?"  she  panted. 

Larrick  stared  and  roared  again. 

"Lord,  no,  honey!     That's  only  r,  chunk  of  cinnabar." 

"Cinnabar?"  she  cried.  "Isn't  that  the  stuff  you  found 
before?" 

He  nodded. 

She  shrieked,  "Then  you're  rich  again?" 

"Maybe,"  he  said,  indifferently.  "I  might  be.  Looks 
like." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  you're  sitting  out  here  in  this 
loathsome,  dried-up  wilderness  when  you  might  be  cruising 
in  a  yacht  of  your  own?" 

"Well,  I  just  lit  on  it,  and  I  hadn't  had  time  to  make  up 
my  mind  whether  I  really  wanted  to  be  rich  again  or  not." 

She  got  a  long-distance  snub  from  this  and  drew  her 
shoulders  up  with  a  shock. 

"Oh,  pardon  me  for  intruding.  I  supposed  you  were  poor 
and  lonely  as  you  wrote  me  in  your  letter.  I  didn't  expect 
to  find  you  reveling  in  cinnabar  and  cactus  plants." 

He  saw  how  ugly  his  hesitation  must  look  in  her  eyes,  and 
he  pleaded: 

"Nancy  honey,  wait  a  minute.  I  found  this  just  before 
you  came  along.  It  kind  of  knocked  me  off  my  hoss.  My 
brain  is  all  blistered  with  heat  and  misery.  If  I'd  have 
thought  you  were  still  thinkin1  of  me  you'd  have  missed  me, 


402  BEAUTY 

for  I'd  have  been  goin'  lickety-split  to  Alpine  to  register  my 
claim." 

"That's  better,"  she  said,  and  dropped  to  the  ground  so 
close  to  him  that  she  was  in  his  very  bosom  and  he  had 
clenched  her  in  his  arms  and  fastened  his  lips  on  hers  before 
he  quite  knew  what  had  happened. 

And  now  he  was  quite  drunk  with  the  long-denied  rapture 
of  womanhood  embraced  and  embracing. 

Suddenly  they  were  in  grave  danger  from  tne  loneliness, 
the  absence  of  witnesses,  the  fierce  heat  of  the  twilight  be- 
ginning already  to  cloak  the  harshness  of  reality  with 
mystery  and  pathos. 

He  was  where  he  had  been  with  Clelia  in  the  night- 
shrouded  canoe,  and  Nancy  was  even  more  dangerous  to 
herself  and  him.  They  were  alone  in  an  uncivilized,  ab- 
original world  and  their  souls  rang  with  what  Robie  calls 
"the  instinctive  phyletic  cry  of  mind  and  body  for  a  fruition 
of  hopes,  for  a  fulfillment  of  instincts."  The  unscientific 
language  is  not  so  handsome. 

Larrick  remembered  the  battle  he  had  had  with  Clelia's 
helplessness  and  that  gave  him  the  courage,  or  the  cowardice, 
to  play  Joseph  once  more. 

He  wrenched  himself  free  from  Nancy's  arms  and  mut- 
tered, "We  better  be  starting  back  before  it  gets  so  dark 
we'd  lose  our  way." 

"I  shouldn't  mind  that,"  she  sighed. 

He  had  not  mentioned  the  fact  that  the  stars  could  light 
his  way  home  as  often  before. 

"You  wouldn't  want  to  spend  a  night  out  on  the  desert," 
he  faltered,  ashamed  of  his  own  better  self. 

"I'd  love  it,"  she  said,  leaving  the  whole  war  to  him. 

He  made  a  last  pitiful  effort : 

"But  I  don't  want  Ma  Milman  and  those  dirty-mouthed 
ranch  hands  talking  about  my — "  He  had  almost  said 
"about  my  wife"  when  his  mind  darted  down  another 
channel,  and  he  said,  "What  under  the  sun  did  you  tell 
Ma  Milman,  Nancy,  anyway?" 

"When  I  arrived  there  from  Alpine  in  a  little  car  I  asked 
for  you.  They  told  me  you  were  out  'thisaway  some- 


THE   AFTERGLOW  403 

wheres'  and  might  not  be  in  for  a  day  or  two.  So  I  said 
I'd  ride  out  to  meet  you,  because  I  had  most  important  news. 
They  wanted  to  send  somebody  along,  but  I  told  them  I 
had  to  see  you  alone." 

Now  he  could  ask  her  the  long-deferred  question  and  he 
did: 

"Nancy,  in  Gawd's  name,  before  I  bust,  tell  me  what 
brought  you  here." 

She  looked  at  him,  then  lowered  her  eyes  and  murmured, 
"The  police  got  after  me  and  I  didn't  know  anywhere  else 
to  hide." 

Larrick  had  a  maddening  suspicion  that  she  was  fooling 
him.  He  never  could  tell  about  her.  She  was  none  of  your 
humorists  who  advertise  their  jokes  with  a  merry  smile,  a 
sparkling  tone,  a  twinkling  eye,  or  an  apologetic,  "if  you  will 
pardon  the  levity."  She  believed  that  while  one  may  grin 
at  tragedy,  jokes  should  be  served  with  grim  earnestness. 

Larrick  suspected  her  solemnities,  but  was  equally  afraid 
of  her  audacities.  Besides,  how  could  he  know  that  she  had 
not  killed  somebody?  And  as  for  seeking  refuge  in  Texas, 
what  was  more  commonplace  than  that?  Thousands  of 
men  and  women  had  fled  to  its  spacious  wildernesses. 

He  remembered  how  Madsen  had  suspected  her  of  Clelia's 
murder  when  he  found  the  molds  hidden  in  her  closet.  He 
was  sure  of  her  innocence,  but  justice  was  a  notorious  bungler, 
always  lynching  the  wrong  person. 

He  groaned:  "I'm  sorry  if  that's  true,  Nancy,  but  Gawd 
knows  I'm  glad  you  came  to  me,  and  nobody  will  ever  get 
you  without  gettin'  me  first." 

Tears  rolled  brightly  across  the  sills  of  her  eyes,  and  she 
flung  her  arm  about  him  again  and  kissed  him,  sighing: 
"You  angel!  You  adorable,  dear,  damned  fool!" 

Then  she  took  mercy  on  him  and  grew  really  earnest, 
and  answered  his  question,  seating  herself  at  a  respectful 
distance. 

"I  came  to  bring  you  news  of  Clelia.  I  found  out  how 
she  died  and  I  wanted  to  tell  you  myself.  There's  nobody 
pursuing  me" — she  smiled  and  gave  him  back  the  word  at 
the  head  of  his  letter — "honey.  It's  me  that's  pursuing 


4o4  BEAUTY 

you.  I  knew  how  you  wanted  to  know  about  Clelia,  and 
so  I  came;  because  I  was  lonely  in  New  York  and  you 
had  made  me  think  the  desert  was  a  pretty  place. 

"I  don't  agree  with  you  a  bit.  I  think  it's  the  garbage 
scow  of  the  world,  and  I  can't  see  why  you  stay  here.  I 
won't  let  you  stay  here,  where  there's  no  art,  no  music,  no 
joy,  no  beauty,  nothing  but  a  few  brave  people  fighting  a 
losing  battle  for  the  sake  of  their  children's  children." 

"But  Clelia — you  said  you  knew,"  he  urged. 

She  nodded  and  went  on : 

"This  is  how  she  died." 

While  he  puzzled  over  the  odd  phrase  she  was  lifting  off 
her  great  cowboy  hat.  Then  she  pushed  back  the  hair 
swung  so  low  that  it  met  her  brow.  And  there  along  her 
forehead  Larrick  saw  the  scar  of  a  wound  like  Clelia 's,  save 
that  it  was  on  the  other  temple  and  even  longer. 

He  cried  out  and  writhed  at  the  pain  it  must  have  meant. 
He  sickened  at  the  flaw  on  the  marble  of  her  fine  forehead. 
He  groped  for  an  explanation: 

"Nancy!     Did  the  same  man  do  that  who  killed  Clelia?" 

She  smiled  weirdly.     "The  same  man?    Yes." 

"Who  was  he?" 

She  pointed  to  the  sky.  Larrick  frowned  with  confusion. 
She  checked  his  impatience : 

"  Listen,  and  I'll  tell  you.  I  worried  over  Clelia  all  winter 
and  so  did  everybody  else  who  knew  and  loved  her.  When 
the  spring  came  and  the  ice  went  down  the  Hudson  I  knew 
that  it  was  melting  in  the  Adirondacks  and  the  snow  would 
be  gone. 

"I  had  a  wild  ambition  to  go  there  and  look  about.  I 
put  it  off  again  and  again,  until  I  nearly  went  mad.  Then 
I  told  my  people  a  lie  and  went  up  to  Mrs.  Roantree's  camp. 
Nobody  was  there  but  Jeffers,  busy  with  repairing  the 
winter's  damages.  He  was  amazed  to  see  me,  but  he  had 
found  no  clew  at  all. 

"I  wandered  everywhere,  searching  for  footprints  or 
weapons.  Jeffers  had  been  over  all  the  ground  in  vain,  and 
he  soon  left  me  to  my  own  devices.  I  kept  coming  back  to 
the  big  rock  by  the  pine  tree  where  you  found  her  in  the  ice. 


THE   AFTERGLOW  405 

I  felt  that  perhaps  the  weapon  that  killed  her  might  be  down 
in  there. 

"The  day  was  warm  and  the  breeze  full  of  pine  fragrance 
and  the  water  was  still  and  sunlit.  The  spring  air  was 
fairly  wheedling  and  the  lake  was  simply  irresistible. 

"Somehow  I  felt  that  if  I  should  get  in  there  and  grope 
about  the  bottom  of  the  lake  I  might  find  a  hammer  or  a 
revolver  or  something  that  had  been  used  upon  Clelia  and 
thrown  in  after  her. 

"I  looked  in  all  directions  through  the  pine  branches  and 
could  see  nobody  anywhere.  Jeffers,  I  knew,  was  far  away. 
So  on  a  crazy  impulse  I  stripped  off  my  clothes  and  made 
ready. 

"It  was  so  wonderful  to  be  there  with  the  sun  pouring 
down  on  me,  the  warm  air  fanning  me,  the  pine  needles 
brushing  across  me,  and  no  clothes  to  hamper  me  that  I 
forgot  to  be  sad.  I  became  terribly  primeval,  animal.  I 
almost  forgot  that  death  could  exist.  I  almost  forgot  Clelia. 
Something — well — -voluptuous  and  wonderfully  physical 
made  me  want  to  plunge  deep  into  the  lake  just  for  the 
joy  of  the  leap  and  the  shock  and  the  long  upcurve,  and 
then  the  swim  and  the  splashing  and  the — the  being  alive. 

"Then  I  remembered  my  business  there  and  scolded  my- 
self for  feeling  glad.  I  stepped  to  the  edge  of  the  rock 
and  filled  my  lungs  with  air  for  a  deep  dive  and  a  long 
search  below. 

"I  swung  my  arms  back  and  brought  them  together  and 
down  I  went.  How  I  cut  the  air!  How  I  slashed  the  water! 
'  It  was  a  pretty  neat  dive  for  me,'  I  said  to  myself.  But  I 
just  had  a  moment's  terror  of  the  icy  chill.  It  was  fero- 
ciously cold.  Then  I  was  struck  on  the  head  as  if  some  one 
had  dealt  me  a  blow  with  an  ax.  I  rolled  and  twisted  on  the 
sharp-edged  rocks  and  came  up  to  the  air  all  turned  round, 
bruised,  scared  to  death,  blood  streaming  down  into  my 
eyes,  and  the  water  all  red  about  my  face. 

"I  went  under  in  my  fright,  and  gave  myself  up  for  lost. 
I  just  had  resolution  enough  to  remember  that  I  must  not  die 
and  disappear  there.  I  fought  against  the  pain  and  the 
fright  and  swam  to  the  rock  and  pulled  myself  out  of  the 


4o6  BEAUTY 

bitterly  cold  water,  dragged  myself  up  on  the  pine  needles 
of  the  shore  and  fainted,  I  think.  When  I  came  to  I  almost 
fainted  again  as  I  looked  down  along  my  poor  body  through 
the  blood  dripping  from  my  forehead.  There  was  a  slash 
on  my  right  breast,  one  on  my  hip,  and  all  along  my  right 
thigh,  and  my  right  instep  was  all  clawed.  I  sat  there, 
naked  and  freezing,  dipping  ice  water  from  the  lake  and 
washing  the  blood  off  till  the  cold  of  it  checked  the  flow. 
Then  I  clambered  up  to  my  clothes,  my  teeth  chattering  like 
a  monkey's  from  chill  and  from  my  narrow  escape.  I 
managed  to  get  into  my  things  and  hobble  to  the  cabin. 

"  Jeffers  saw  me  limping  along  and  ran  to  me.  He  helped 
me  to  the  house  and  got  a  lot  of  antiseptics  and  liniments 
and  bandages  and  drove  over  to  the  village  for  a  doctor. 

"I  stayed  in  the  mountains  a  few  days  and  came  back 
with  my  discovery.  I  told  poor  Clelia's  parents  and  they 
believed  me  and  it  made  them  ever  so  glad.  And  they  gave 
it  to  the  newspapers.  You  didn't  see  them?" 

"I  never  see  any  new  newspapers." 

"  I  was  sure  you  wouldn't.  Norry  was  going  to  write  you 
all  about  it,  but  I  told  him  I  wanted  to  tell  }'ou  myself  so 
that  you  wouldn't  worry  about  Clelia  any  more.  And  now 
that's  why  I  came.  Aren't  you  glad?" 

"I'm  glad  you  came,  but  I  don't  know  why — yet." 

She  mothered  him  with  a  caress.  "You've  been  here  too 
long.  Don't  you  see,  you  dear  old  stupid?  Clelia  wasn't 
murdered.  Nobody  hated  her  and  killed  her.  On  that 
last  wonderful  night  before  the  blizzard  she  must  have  looked 
out  of  her  window  into  the  moonlight.  She  loved  it.  Who 
doesn't?  But  Clelia  seemed  to  belong  to  it,  somehow,  not 
as  a  sentimental  excuse  for  nonsense  with  a  man,  but  for 
its  own  beauty. 

"She  must  have  felt  the  call  of  it.  She  ran  out  to  it  in 
her  nightgown  and  her  little  satin  mules.  She  saw  the  light 
of  it  on  the  lake  blinking  at  her.  She  ran  along  the  shore. 
She  climbed  the  rock  to  see  the  breadth  of  the  path  of  the 
moon. 

"Perhaps  some  big  fish  shot  up  through  the  water  and  fell 
back  with  a  joyous  splash.  The  waves  must  have  fascinated 


THE    AFTERGLOW  407 

her.  She  loved  to  dive.  You  know  that,  and  how  well  she 
dived.  She  wasn't  afraid  of  anything. 

"Can't  you  see  her  standing  there  in  the  moonlight  among 
the  pine  branches,  dancing  and  singing,  kicking  off  her 
slippers,  and  making  ready  for  one  last  glorious  plunge? 
She  must  have  laughed  with  delight  as  she  put  her  hands 
together  and  went  head  first  into  the  moonlit  water. 

"And  then  the  sharp  rock  that  I  grazed  caught  her  full 
in  the  temple,  and  she  never  knew  a  pang  or  a  sorrow. 
She  was  just  gone  from  the  world." 

"But  her  hands.  The  prayer  she  was  saying,"  Larrick 
mumbled. 

"That  was  the  position  of  her  hands  for  her  dive,"  Nancy 
said.  "They  just  came  down  to  her  breast  as  she  floated 
up  to  the  surface.  Then  the  storm  came  and  the  ice  formed 
about  her  and  upheld  her  from  sinking,  and  the  snows 
covered  her  till  you  found  her." 

Larrick  buried  his  head  in  his  hands  and  stared  into  the 
waning  fire.  The  light  found  tears  on  his  cheeks  and  made 
rubies  of  them.  If  Nancy  felt  any  jealous  anguish  she  kept 
it  back  deep  in  her  heart  and  proved  the  quality  of  her  love 
by  her  tenderness  with  Larrick.  She  put  her  hand  on  his 
arm  and  pleaded  with  him  not  to  grieve. 

"Don't  you  see  how  beautiful  it  was?  The  glory  of  the 
night  drew  Clelia  out  into  itself.  The  beauty  of  the  lake 
made  her  dance  with  joy.  Her  whole  soul  was  in  a  rapture 
of  beauty  and  she  dived  into  Paradise,  laughing  and  blissful. 
She  never  knew  sorrow  and  loneliness  and  shame  and 
remorse  and  sickness  and  age  and  not  being  loved  and 
all  those  things  the  rest  of  us  poor  people  go  through.  She 
plunged  into  bliss  in  her  youth.  What  more  could  you  ask 
for  one  you  loved?  My  God!  how  could  you  prove  your 
love  for  her  better  than  by  thanking  God  that  he  took  her 
so — took  her  on  the  wing?  As  if  he  had  caught  a  song  bird 
in  the  air  and  lifted  it  up  to  heaven!" 

Larrick  laid  his  hand  on  hers  and  pressed  it,  more  for  her 
comfort  than  his  own.  He  was  a  slow  thinker,  and  it  was 
not  the  whole  question  to  him  that  Clelia  had  died  in  hap- 
piness and  in  beauty.  Her  loss  was  none  the  less  because 


4o8  BEAUTY 

she  was  snatched  away  in  a  flash  of  ecstasy.  The  saint 
swept  to  bliss  in  a  fiery  chariot  leaves  the  world  all  the 
darker. 

While  he  brooded  in  a  new  shadow  the  sky  was  giving 
up  the  too-bright  day  with  equal  reluctance. 

Clouds  mustered  above  the  horizon  as  if  at  the  assembly 
bugle  call  for  evening  parade.  They  gathered  in  dull  khaki 
lines.  The  sun,  red  as  a  huge  rose,  descended  among  them. 
Colors  marched  and  countermarched,  their  uniforms  magi- 
cally changed  from  splendor  to  splendor. 

Suddenly  the  rose  was  a  vast  ingot  of  pure  gold  melting 
in  a  caldron  of  blinding  fire.  Then  the  caldron  was  over- 
turned and  a  torrent  of  molten  gold  spilled  abroad,  flooding 
the  levels  of  the  desert,  setting  each  cactus  ablaze,  gilding 
the  sage  clumps  to  many-branched  candelabra  all  gold. 
This  gold  dulled  to  brass,  to  silver,  to  dross  as  the  miracle 
worker  of  light  pulled  the  sun  below  the  horizon.  But  the 
clouds  were  crimson  now  and  shining  downward  as  if  with 
live  coals  sifted  through  the  gratings  of  a  fireplace.  The 
cruel  mountains  were  no  longer  ugly  slag,  but  ranges  of 
crushed  heliotrope,  peaked  ashes  of  mignonette  dust,  as  if  all 
the  mignonettes  that  had  ever  bloomed  were  heaped  there. 
And  so  by  the  mere  shifting  of  a  light,  the  carrying  of  the 
sun's  lamp  from  the  height  of  the  sky  downstairs  behind  the 
hills,  the  whole  world  was  altered  from  bitter  prose  to  lyric 
verse,  from  dun  nullity  to  carmine  splendor.  The  clouds 
that  had  been  mockeries  of  rain  refused;  the  hills  that  had 
been  hideous  sterilities  of  all-denying  ugliness  were  beautiful 
now,  and  tender  and  pitiful  beyond  belief. 

Thus  criticism  and  sympathy  make  all  the  difference 
between  the  aspects  of  a  man,  a  deed,  a  work  of  art.  Criti- 
cism, like  a  relentless  noon,  sends  its  shafts  into  every  cranny, 
sharpens  every  roughness-,  aggravates  every  helpless  imper- 
fection. Sympathy  brings  its  own  mantle  of  color  and  its 
own  merciful  shadows  and,  finding  the  yearning  for  beauty, 
grants  the  prayer  and  gives  the  benediction.  What  are  hate 
and  love,  indeed,  but  noon  and  twilight?  Which  tells  the 
truth?  or  do  both?  or  does  neither? 

Larrick  and  Nancy  felt  the  light  managing  their  own  souls 


THE   AFTERGLOW  409 

as  it  did  the  sky.  They  ceased  to  cringe  before  death  and 
love  and  duty.  A  solemn  rapture  opened  their  hearts  like 
night-blooming  flowers,  exhaling  perfume  in  the  dark. 

The  borderland  between  rapture  and  despair  was  as  vague 
as  the  line  between  day  and  night.  They  were  not  sure 
whether  they  were  utterly  happy  or  utterly  sad. 

But  gradually  the  embers  of  twilight  waned,  as  if  weary 
of  the  struggle.  The  fireplace  in  the  west  grew  dull  and  chill 
with  the  sorrow  of  defeat  before  irresistible  night.  The 
earth  lost  its  radiance,  its  warmth.  The  man  and  the  woman, 
the  desert  and  the  mountains,  were  lost  in  one  blot  of  ink. 
The  crests  were  but  edges  against  a  sky  of  paling  blue,  of 
old  rags,  of  tattered  finery. 

There  were  no  stars  yet,  and  when  one  dawned  it  was  far 
away  and  furtive  as  a  hostile  spy,  a  scout. 

There  was  terror,  and  death  prowled;  the  sky  became 
the  vast,  frowning  brow  of  Judgment  Day. 

Abruptly  the  air  moved,  and  coldly,  as  if  the  flesh  of  the 
earth  shivered.  The  little  camp  fire  trembled  and  the  flame 
cowered. 

"  I  am  cold,"  Nancy  whimpered  from  the  blanketing  gloom. 

That  word  "cold"  made  Larrick  recoil  from  her,  remem- 
bering Clelia.  And  she,  understanding  what  he  thought  of, 
leaned  away  from  him,  as  if  departing  to  exile. 

Then  he  remembered  that  day  when  he  was  lost  in  the 
blizzard,  and  cold  to  the  very  marrow  of  his  soul,  and  how 
she  had  come  out  into  the  terror  of  snow  to  find  him — and 
found  him.  If  it  had  not  been  for  her  he  would  not  have 
lived  to  break  her  heart  by  clinging  to  a  vain  grief. 

Something  moved  him  to  say,  "We  who  are  still  alive 
must  keep  each  other  warm." 

He  felt  through  the  night  for  her  and  drew  her  close.  And 
now  at  last  she  seemed  to  need  him,  to  belong  to  him. 

They  clung  together,  invisible  and  inaudible,  save  as  they 
heard  their  hearts  thumping  in  their  breasts.  That  machin- 
ery was  bravely  at  work,  though  the  night  fell  and  the  desert 
despaired. 

It  came  to  Larrick  that  it  was  better  to  try  to  wring  a 
comfort  from  tragedy,  to  rescue  a  little  wreckage  from  grief, 


4io  BEAUTY 

and  to  meet  whatever  came  with  bravery,  than  to  wallow 
in  a  slime  of  cynicism,  to  mock  at  hope,  and  to  dignify  cow- 
ardice with  the  name  of  art  or  philosophy. 

He  would  rise  and  go  back  into  the  best  world  he  could 
find,  and  take  with  him  this  woman  that  loved  him.  And 
together  they  would  make  a  pilgrimage  after  such  joy  and 
beauty  and  pity  and  grace  as  they  might  discover  by  much 
seeking  among  men  and  the  works  of  men. 

So  he  kissed  Nancy  Fleet  and  helped  her  up,  saying:  "I 
reckon  we  might  as  well  be  movin'  on  along  toward  home 
now.  To-morrow — " 

The  horses  had  drawn  close  for  company  and  were  willing 
to  be  caught.  The  stars  were  coming  out  in  herds  upon  the 
desert  overhead,  as  the  two  horses  jogged  along  close  to- 
gether. By  and  by  an  enormous  moon  rose  slowly,  claiming 
the  jaded  earth  the  sun  had  abandoned,  and  squandering 
mercy  and  glamour  everywhere. 


THE   END 


A     000  045  759     8 


